It’s almost St. Patrick’s Day! For a lot of people that might mean green beer, rowdy music, and a serious hangover the next day; but because I have little kids running around underfoot, I’ll be sticking to food for at least the next couple years! So make the food worth it, right? These scones are worth it, friends. They’re so flaky and buttery, with just the right touch of sugar and a hint of salt. They are the thing you eat three of without realizing what you’ve done until it’s too late. And we’re making them, today. Loosen your belts, it’s scone time.
Something fun about scones is that once you have a good basic recipe, you can customize them to your heart’s content. Lots of traditional scones will have dried currants, raisins, or nuts in them, but maybe chocolate chips are more your style. If you like them sweet, add more sugar- if not, omit some. Jam or no jam, cream or no cream. Who knew that scones had so many possibilities, right? Today we’ll be making a basic scone that adapts well to almost any change you’d like to make. My recipe is adapted very slightly from one by Epicurious, and the changes I’ve made are big hits in my family.
A word about butter. There’s a lot of it in this recipe. The key to a delicious, flaky scone is all in the butter. If there was ever a time to buy that shiny box of Kerrygold that taunts you at the grocery store every time you walk by, now is it. Regardless of the brand you choose, you need it to be cold when you work with it. Don’t pop it in the microwave for even a second. Because it breaks down into small pea-sized pieces, your dough will be light and flaky as the butter melts into the dough during baking. (Same goes for a pie crust!) This recipe uses a pastry cutter to break up the butter, but if you don’t have one yet, you can use two forks for the majority of the work and then your hands to break up any stubborn bits.
The recipe also calls for demerara sugar and clarified butter. If you’re saying, ‘Wait, what? Tricky ingredient sneak attack!’ that’s okay! Let’s talk about the sugar first. Demerara sugar tastes like brown sugar, but is a raw, large grained that is much crunchier than brown sugar. It’s amazing on these scones, and is available in most grocery stores in the baking aisle near the other ‘natural’ sugars like Stevia (or here on Amazon for a great price). You can substitute regular granulated sugar or any other type without any issue if you like.
And finally, the clarified butter. Lots of more intermediate and advanced recipes call for it, which might make you think it’s a difficult thing to make, but it’s not. It just means butter without the water and other solids, basically a full-fat butter rather than the normal 85-ish percent stuff you usually buy in the grocery store. To make it, you simply melt unsalted butter in a small saucepan over medium heat until it bubbles. Those bubbles will become like white semi-solid bits that you can skim off the top, and what you’ll be left with in the pan is clarified butter! Not so difficult, right?
With all that out of the way, let’s get baking!
Buttery Irish Scones
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup skim milk cold
- 1/4 cup half and half cold
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar white
- 1 tsp salt kosher or coarse sea salt
- 3 cups flour all purpose
- 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1 1/4 cup butter unsalted
- 3 Tbsp demerara sugar
- 1/2 tsp sea salt coarse
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375, and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the milk, half and half, granulated sugar, and 1 tsp salt until dissolved. Set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and 1 cup (two sticks) of the butter using a pastry cutter (or your hands). Continue to break up the butter until it is in mostly pea-sized bits.
- Pour the milk mixture over the flour and combine until dough sticks together. Turn out onto a floured surface.
- Roll the dough into a large rectangle, about 15" long and 8" high. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter and use a basting brush to spread it across the dough surface. Because the dough is cold, the butter should firm up a bit on the surface.
- Fold the bottom half of the dough up to the middle, and then fold the top down over this- just like folding a letter to fit in a long, business size envelope. Fold the long rectangle in the middle to halve its length, and then fold it over again the same way.
- Gently roll the dough flat again, until it is a rectangle about 8" high and 4" wide. Use a sharp knife to cut vertically down the middle, diving the dough in half. Cut each of the two columns into four pieces, making a total of eight scones.
- Place the scones on the parchment paper and sprinkle liberally with demerara sugar, then lightly with the sea salt.
- Bake 20-25 minutes, or until edges are golden.
- While scones bake, clarify 4 tablespoons of butter on the stove. As soon as the scones come out of the oven, brush the tops with the butter and serve warm with topping of your choice.
Make sure to let me know in the comments if you have any questions! I hope you love them as much as my family does. Start off your St. Patrick’s Day the right way, and then nap these babies off until it’s time for corned beef and cabbage!
