Blood Orange Scones

I woke up on Sunday thinking about scones. It happens to everyone I hear, but Sunday it happened to me.

I love making scones because they literally take less than an hour from deciding to make them to eating them warm out of the oven with a cup of tea. They’re crumbly and delicious and very easily impress people, but they’re a lovely lazy Sunday morning activity.

My scone making motivation came on a good day, I had leftover blood oranges from my crepe cake and had my Aunt’s birthday lunch later that day, so I had recipe inspiration and would have a worthy crew of recipe testers (side note: everyone loved them, as will you).

These scones have a perfect crumbly texture and a subtle (but not too subtle) blood orange flavour. Perfect with breakfast, afternoon tea, champagne snack, etc.

Ingredients

2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 cup butter, cold
1 egg
1/4 cup greek yogurt (you can also use sour cream)
1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp whipping cream, plus extra for brushing
1.5 tsp vanilla
1 tbsp fresh blood orange zest
Raw sugar for sprinkling, optional

Steps

Preheat oven to 400F and line a baking sheet with parchment.

Whisk together flour, brown sugar, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Using a pastry cutter, cut the butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture looks like rough crumbs. Some pea sized pieces are okay.

In a small bowl, whisk egg, greek yogurt, cream, vanilla and zest until combined. Add in two parts to butter and flour mixture, mixing until just combined after each addition. After all incorporated, press into a ball (see right photo).

Turn dough onto floured surface and press into a disk about a half inch thick, don’t worry if it’s not perfect. Cut disk into 8 pieces and using a spatula, transfer to prepared baking sheet. Brush with cream and sprinkle with raw sugar if desired.