When made following the basic recipe, these make excellent shortcakes.  Using any summer berry topping, and fresh whipped cream, it’s an easy way to feed a crowd.

With the cheese or bacon options, they make a great bread for serving alongside a hearty bowl of soup or a crisp winter salad.  Dress them up with white chocolate & lemon or cocoa for making a shortcake style dessert that will be remembered.

The trick to this recipe is that there isn’t any fat to be cut into the dry mix.  All the fat you need to make them light and fluffy is in the cream.  This recipe is really quick to make, with great results, and can be doubled easily.  The recipe shown is for Paprika-Cheese.

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Ingredients

3 c flour

¼ c sugar

1 ½ T baking powder

¾ t salt

2 c less 2T of cream (32 – 36%)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 425°

Whisk together all dry ingredients. 

Stir in any additions (see options).

Slowly stir in all of the cream.  If the dough’s a bit wet, add in a small amount of flour.  If it’s a bit dry drizzle in a bit more cream.

Using a clean surface, gently knead the dough 12 – 15 times, and create a thick log.  Cut the log into 3 fairly equal pieces.

Pat each into a disc.  Roll to make uniform.  They should be about ¾” thick. 

Cut each disc into 6 pie-shaped pieces, creating 18 scones.  Alternatively, roll the whole dough out, and cut with 2½“ round biscuit cutter.  Rerolling as necessary.  Don’t turn the cutter, as it will stop the dough from rising to its potential height.

Place the scones on a parchment-lined sheet.

Bake for 12 – 15 minutes in the center of the oven. They should be golden on the top and the bottom.

Options:

1. Paprika-Cheese: add 6 oz grated, aged cheddar and ½ t paprika to dry ingredients.  When ready for the oven, lightly dust the scones with sifted paprika.

2. Bacon: add ½ c chopped, cooked bacon to dry ingredients

3. Lemon-White Chocolate: increase sugar to ½ c and add ½ c white chocolate pieces and the zest of a lemon to the dry ingredients.

4. Chocolate: increase sugar to ½ c and add ¼ c sifted cocoa to the dry ingredients.