Simple Scones

A fellow blogger (A Star on the Forehead) asked me for my recipe for scones. I’ve never posted a recipe before, but this is a good one!

2 cups all purpose flour

1/3^rd cup plus 1 tsp sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1/4^th tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

8 tbsp – 1 stick – unsalted butter (I use anything healthier, no difference)

½ cup raisins or dried currants

Tsp cinnamon

½ cup sour cream

1 large egg

1. Adjust oven rack to lower middle position and preheat oven to 400^o.
2. In a medium bowl, mix 1/3 cup sugar, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add cinnamon, if you are making cinnamon raisin scones.
3. Cut butter into tiny pieces and use your fingers to work in the butter. The mixture should resemble coarse corn meal. Stir in raisins.
4. In a small bowl, whisk sour cream and egg until smooth.
5. Using a fork, stir the sour cream mixture into flour mixture until large dough clumps form. Use your hands to press the dough against the side of the bowl into a ball. The dough should become very sticky and should come together easily.
6. Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and pat into a 7-8 inch circle about 1/4^th inch thick. Sprinkle with remaining sugar. Use a sharp knife to cut the dough into 8 wedges. Place on a greased cookie sheet or parchment paper (my oven runs a little hot and the parchment paper kept the bottoms from getting too brown), 1 inch apart.
7. Bake until slightly browned on top, 15-17 min. Keep an eye on the scones – depending on the oven, it could take as little as 13 min. Cool for 5 min before serving.
8. For orange-cranberry scones, add a generous tsp of orange zest to the dry ingredients and substitute cranberries for the raisins.
9. For cherry-almond scones, add ½ tsp almond extract to the sour cream mixture, and substitute dried cherries for the raisins.
10. For lemon-blueberry scones, add a generous tsp of lemon zest to the dry ingredients and substitute dried blueberries for the raisins.