My sister asked me when I posted a photo of these, ‘are they dry and heavy?’
No they are not! My scones rarely are, unless I make them super dense by adding bits and nuts and stuff. These are, I suspect because of the cheese, light and tender even for my scones.
I was working off a base cream scone recipe, so you could easily alter them as you wish in terms of dried fruit, nuts, bacon bits, etcetera!
Apricot Cheese Scones
- 2 c flour (sifted and measured, I was using pastry flour, but all-purpose would work as well)
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 4 oz frozen butter (keep it frozen until use)
- 2 eggs – separated, reserve one white for glazing
- 1/2 c heavy cream (more or less, see below)
- 1/2 c chopped, floured, dried apricots
- 1/2 c finely shredded cheese
- turbinado sugar or parmesan cheese for topping
Preheat oven to 450F
In a large bowl, sift together the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In another small bowl, whisk together the two egg yolks and one egg white. The reserved egg white can be whisked until frothy with a teaspoonful of water and set aside. Chop your dried apricots using a small amount of flour to keep them from sticking together badly.
Using a grater, grate the frozen butter into the dry ingredients. If you start out with a whole frozen stick, but don’t unwrap it all the way, you have something to hold onto while grating.
Give your butter and flour a quick mix, then mix in your apricots and shredded cheese (I used a cheddar/mozzarella mix as it was what I had on hand. Other types will add more flavor, or less). Finally, mix in the eggs, and most of your half-cup of cream, until you form a ball of sticky dough. Add a bit more cream if needed, or not. Depends on your flour and added flavorant’s moisture. If you used, say, cottage cheese you would need less cream. If you used parmesan you would need more.
Turn out onto a lightly floured surface, and sift a bit on top, too. Pat dough into a rough rectangle, and about 1/2″ thick (halfway to the first joint of your thumb, for me, if I put the tip of my thumb on the board). Cut into vaguely triangular shapes.
Place the scones on your baking sheet, shaping as you desire (I smooshed mine into a little less long and thin triangles, so they would bake more evenly). They could be cut smaller, these were the main course of a Sunday breakfast, but we got 8, and each of us had two and that was filling enough!
Brush scones with the egg white and water mixture. Sprinkle on coarse sugar, or a dry cheese (parmesan works well) depending on whether you want to slant towards sweet or savory.
Bake for 11-13 minutes at 450F, removing when tops are golden brown and caramelized.
Allow to cool briefly.
Apricot Cheese Scones
Notes
Ingredients
- 2 c flour (sifted and measured, I was using pastry flour, but all-purpose would work as well)
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 4 oz frozen butter (keep it frozen until use)
- 2 eggs – separated, reserve one white for glazing
- 1/2 c heavy cream (more or less, see below)
- 1/2 c chopped, floured, dried apricots
- 1/2 c finely shredded cheese
- turbinado sugar or parmesan cheese for topping
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 450F
- In a large bowl, sift together dry ingredients
- separate eggs, reserving one white in a smaller bowl. Whisk two egg yolks and one egg white in a small bowl, set aside.
- Grate frozen butter into dry ingredients.
- Mix chopped apricots and shredded cheese into dry ingredients.
- Mix eggs and most of the cream into the dough. Add a little more cream as needed to form sticky dough ball.
- Turn dough out onto floured surface, flour top of dough, and pat out with hands. Form into a roughly rectangular shape about 1/2″ thick. Cut into triangles.
- Bake on silicone-pad lined cookie sheet, or greased cookie sheet, for 11-13 minutes, until tops are golden brown.
Comments
6 responses to “Apricot Cheese Scones”
Cadar. have you ever considered doing your recipes as YouTube videos? Watching cooking show videos if a lot less dry (pun intended) than reading recipes. I follow several of those channels, ( Sam the cooking guy, townsends for historical recipes, and kentrollins since I’m from Texas) and I think you might garner some extra moolah.
I have. I’m trying to figure out how to video such a thing. I have been asked several times to do cooking videos, but it’s complicated without the right setup!
Are there perhaps, videos on how to do cooking videos?
That is a good question.
I didn’t know about flouring things like the dried apricots to keep them from sticking.
I will suggest this to the kitchen supervisor!
Oh, it’s a great trick! Powdered sugar can also be used if you don’t want to throw off the flour ratio, but it does not work as well.