What do you brush scones before baking?

For best browning, brush rounds (or drop scones) with milk or cream before baking. For added crunch and flavor, top with sugar (granulated, turbinado, or sparkling) or cinnamon-sugar.

What is a bakery scone?

scone, quick bread of British origin and worldwide fame, made with leavened barley flour or oatmeal that is rolled into a round shape and cut into quarters before baking, traditionally on a griddle .

What to avoid when making scones?

5 Mistakes to Avoid When Baking Scones Using anything but cold ingredients. The secret to the flakiest scones is to start with cold ingredients — cold butter, cold eggs, and cold cream. ... Only using all-purpose flour. ... Overmixing the dough. ... Not chilling the dough before baking. ... Baking them ahead of time. May 1, 2019

Which flour is best for scones?

Flours: the perfectly fluffy texture of these consistently reliable scones is owed to 3 cups of self-raising flour (and a little plain flour for dusting!). Chilled butter: if you want to achieve beautiful, flaky and fluffy scones that rise well, cold butter is key!

How do you make scones rise higher?

To ensure taller scones, start with a thicker dough disc and place the scones on a tray with sides, allowing them to slightly touch one another . This arrangement encourages the scones to push against the pan and each other, promoting height.

What is the difference between American scones and English scones?

American scones use much more butter than British scones , and they usually have quite a bit more sugar. The extra butter is what makes them so much denser. This is not really a good or bad thing, as British scones pile on plenty of sugar (in the form of preserves/jam) and butter or clotted cream as toppings.

What does brushing the tops of scones with cream or beaten egg white do?

In baking, many recipes call for an egg wash to be brushed on the baked goods before it goes into the oven. The purpose of this is to give the final product a golden brown color that is slightly shiny . Egg washes can make the final product look more professional, a bit crispier, or act as a binder."

How do you stop your scones from drying out when baking?

Don't overbake ! If you bake scones too long, they'll dry out, so keep an eye on them through the oven window. (Don't open the oven to look — it'll let out the heat.) “Bake your scones until they are just golden brown,” Bethany recommends.

What does egg wash do to scones?

Egg washes are used to brush on pastries, breads, pie crusts, biscuits, scones and more before baking them so they bake up with a beautiful, bright, golden brown finish.

What does brushing bread with milk before baking do?

MILK: Brushing with milk will help to color the crust , the sugars in the milk helping to brown it. WATER: Water is often sprayed or brushed onto bread before it is placed in a very hot oven, and during baking, to give the bread an extra-crisp crust.

Morning Recipe: Blackberry Scones from The Big Sur Bakery Cookbook (2024)

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Faith Durand

Faith DurandSVP of Content

Faith is the SVP of Content at Apartment Therapy Media and former Editor-in-Chief of The Kitchn. She is the author of three cookbooks, including the James Beard Award-winning The Kitchn Cookbook. She lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her husband and two daughters.

updated Jan 21, 2020

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Morning Recipe: Blackberry Scones from The Big Sur Bakery Cookbook (1)

Makes2 dozen

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Morning Recipe: Blackberry Scones from The Big Sur Bakery Cookbook (2)

For my husband, vacation means one thing: Time away from the city, preferably in mountains that have views of the sea and the smell of sage. Last summer we decided to go whole hog and guzzle up the concentrated beauty of northern California, with a swing through Big Sur, quite likely one of the most extravagantly lovely places in the world. And there I met my Vacation Scone, the scone for weekend mornings and special breakfasts, the scone that doesn’t pretend to be anything more or less than a massive fluffy treat, craggy and crisp, laden with summer fruit and stained with juice.

If you’re going to make just one scone, let me explain why this should be the one.

Last year my husband and I looked each other in the eye and said, “We need a vacation.” We travel quite a bit, but these are almost never trips of leisure, as we travel for work and squeeze in a good meal here, a museum there. These trips are crazy fun, but patently not vacation. We’re both at a point where we find it comically hard to take time off. A normal evening goes like this: “What are we doing tonight?” “Working.” I am not faux bragging; it’s really joyful and a privilege to have work we love. But there is also the spiritual necessity to regularly let go, let down, and do nothing, to remember your work may be pleasant but not essential. This sabbath doesn’t require travel, of course, but as we were extra stressed-out last summer, we took the nuclear option of California, with a few days on a bay in Marin, and a short stop in Big Sur, that serrated landscape of cliffs, ocean, and mountains that is so lavishly over-endowed with beauty it feels like a unicorn should come prancing out of a cloud of rainbows at any moment.

In Marin I found myself with a bad case of the vacation blues. Taking time off, for me, is a fast track to realizing that I am too wrapped up with my role in the world, and to discomfiting realizations that I can mask my days with busy work. I was bored, itchy, unable to relax. It took four days to detox, and by the time we left Marin for Big Sur I was just beginning to think that I could maybe go twelve hours without checking my email.

There aren’t many places to eat in Big Sur. If you’ve ever driven through, you know how there’s really only one road, hemmed in by the sea on one side and the mountains on the other. I had been looking forward to stopping at The Big Sur Bakery, a local institution — and much more than a bakery. This restaurant perches on the side of the road like a convenience store or casual lunch diner, but it boasts a very good restaurant, with wood-fired pizza and fresh California cooking. We ate there for dinner and looked out over the mountains as they put on a show, turning violet in the sunset, and it felt like I had been handed an enormous gift, with beauty dumped over my head from a bucket. I sat up straighter and relaxed at the same time; it would be wrong to squander it.

The next morning we fueled our hiking plans with a breakfast visit to the bakery, and it was then, as I was finally now in true vacation mode and a worthy frame of mind, The Vacation Scone presented itself. The scones at Big Sur Bakery loom up from the glass pastry case, big enough you might need two hands to hold on, and a third to catch the juice dripping from the fruit. They’re not dry or crumbly or only good with tea — all worthy qualities in leaner scones. They are buttery and rich, and crunchy on top from baked sugar, unpretentious in their generosity of sugar and butter.

We ate peach scones and blueberry scones that day and the next, marveling at their fluffy texture and terrific crust, and, conscious of our vacation eating, climbing just a little faster to the top of that sage-covered hill.

If I could have my way in Congress, a subsidized trip to Big Sur would be wrapped into everyone (everyone’s!) health insurance. It’s like mainlining the outdoors, a shot to the veins of mountains and sky and ocean. For me and my husband, lining up like every other tourist for our little dose of dramatic nature, it was restorative, and I came home clutching the photos and this recipe for Vacation Scones, which is happily shared in the excellent Big Sur Bakery Cookbook.

This year we’re not traveling anywhere for vacation. Instead, we’re staying at home next week, with the doors closed and the windows open, computers off and books open. It’s my favorite way to take time off, with no planes to board and not a lot of money to spend. But we’ll still have Vacation Scones, which came home with us and always take me back. They’re rich enough for a vacation treat, generous like the beauty of the landscapes we love, and I can think of no better platform for fresh summer fruit.

Big Sur Bakery Scones

Makes 2 dozen

Nutritional Info

Ingredients

1 cup
fresh huckleberries, blueberries or other fresh ripe fruit
3 1/2 cups
all-purpose flour
1 cup
granulated sugar
1 tablespoon
baking powder
2 teaspoons
baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons
kosher salt
1 cup
(2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cubed
2 tablespoons
vanilla extract
3/4 to 1 cup
well-shaken cultured buttermilk
2 to 4 tablespoons
turbinado sugar

Instructions

About 2 hours before making the scones, scatter the berries or fruit on a cookie sheet and put it in the freezer. (If using large berries, cut them in half.)
Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, and drop in the cubed butter. Put the bowl in the freezer and leave it there for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, adjust the oven rack to the middle position and preheat the oven to 375°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a Silpat and set it aside.
Using a pastry cutter or two knives, work the chilled ingredients together in the bowl until the butter cubes are the size of peas. Make a well in the center. Combine the vanilla and 3/4 cup buttermilk in a separate bowl, and pour the mixture into the well. Mix the ingredients with a wooden spoon to form a shaggy, slightly crumbly mass. Let stand for 3 to 5 minutes to let the flour absorb the liquid, then fold one more time. If the dough seems simply too dry to come together, add 1 tablespoon buttermilk at a time until it just barely comes together. The dough should not be too wet; the scones will spread too much.
Add the frozen fruit and gently mix them in, trying not to crush them.
To shape the scones, scoop a small handful into your palm and press it into a tall, fat puck and put it on the prepared baking sheet. Repeat, leaving enough room for the scones to double in size. Sprinkle the tops of the scones with the turbinado sugar. Bake for 15 minutes or until they are golden brown around the sides but still tender in the middle.
Carefully transfer the scones to a cooling rack and let them cool for at least 10 minutes before serving. Cool completely before storing in a loosely covered container. Store for up to three days.

Recipe Notes

Adapted slightly from The Big Sur Bakery Cookbook byMichelle Wojtowicz, Phillip Wojtowicz, Michael Gilson, and Catherine Price, and published byWilliam Morrow Cookbooks.

A few notes on the recipe and my changes. The authors are precise about keeping everything very cold. They instruct you to freeze the fruit for a little while before adding it, which helps it stay distinct in the scones (a very smart technique). They also have you chill the bowl of dry ingredients and butter before mixing. Don't skip this; it gives great results.

The original recipe specifies huckleberries or blueberries, but the authors say they rely on what's in season to guide them in the day's flavors. Peach is a favorite here, and blackberries are in season right now for me so that's what I use.

Also, the recipe instructs you to form the scones by packing the dough into a round cookie cutter, then lifting the cutter away. This creates very large scones — small cakes, practically — and I prefer smaller scones that I create by pressing a handful of dough into a thick puck. With this approach, I get over 2 dozen scones from this recipe, although the original yield is 1 dozen.

(Images: Faith Durand. Recipe courtesy of William Morrow.)

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