I do like plain scones, they are so versatile. But sometimes you just want chocolate. These chocolate scones don’t disappoint. They are still a nice, light, flakey scone without too strong of a flavor. It’s just that the mild flavor is mildly chocolate. They are delicious alone. Or with berries and cream, sort of shortcake style. Or with jam and clotted cream. Or–have I mentioned?–plain, perhaps with strong tea or coffee.
I like making scones by scaling the ingredients rather than doing them by volume. There aren’t too many ingredients so it’s not too much of a pain, and the ratio of the dry ingredients is important to get right.
There are websites that will convert weight to volume measures for different ingredients, if you don’t have a kitchen scale. But I highly recommend investing in a scale for this and other recipes–they are so useful and very reasonably priced. I recommend the Cuisinart one I’ve got. I’ve had it since culinary school and it still works perfectly.
Recipe
Ingredients:
- 325g, Bread Flour
- 175g, All Purpose Flour
- 90g, Granulated Sugar (plus more for tops of scones)
- 20g, Unsweetened Cocoa Powder (no need for dutched cocoa, regular will do just fine, but I would recommend getting high quality cocoa.)
- 20g, Baking Powder
- 5g, Baking Soda
- Pinch, Salt
- 175g (1.5 sticks), Unsalted Butter
- 125mL, Heavy Cream (plus more for tops of scones)
- 2 Eggs
Procedure:
- Mix together all the dry ingredients, including the sugar, in a large bowl.
- Cut in the butter until there are no pieces larger than dried lentils.
- Mix the eggs into the cream.
- Stir the cream mixture into the dry ingredients until the dough comes together, taking care not to kneed or otherwise overwork the dough.
- Turn out onto a lightly floured board and pat into a rectangle about 3/4 to 1in thick.
- Cute into squares or triangles. (You can do more traditional round scones, but only pull together the scraps and cut more circles one time–more and those scones with be tough.)
- Preheat the oven to 350*F, while chilling dough for 30 minutes. At this point you can freeze the scones for later use. If you do, bake them directly from frozen, adding about 5 minutes to the baking time, depending on the size of the scones.
- Put on a parchment lined baking sheet with about 2 inches between each scone–they won’t spread like cookies, so you need not be too careful, but the extra space helps them bake more evenly.
- Brush the tops of scones with heavy cream and sprinkle liberally with sugar.
- Bake until the sugar has formed a crust and the sids of the scones look dried out (they’ll be a slightly lighter brown than they were when they went in the oven), about 12-18 minutes depending on the size and thickness.
- Let cool for at least 20 minutes, preferably to room temperature. The scones can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for about 4-5 days.
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