Cranberry-O or O-Cranberry Scone | Recipe
A semi-healthy cranberry orange scone recipe
Fall is one of my favorite season as it give me the excuse to bake! I love starting my morning with a warm cup of pumpkin spice latte accompany with a cranberry orange scone. What is your favorite Fall baked goods? I am pretty sure you guess my by now. ;)
Here is the link to the printable recipe.
What do I need?
Dough
- 1 cup of Whole Wheat Flour (can subst. if APF)
- 1 ¾ cup of All Purpose Flour (APF)
- ¾ tsp. salt
- 1 tbsp. Baking powder
- 1 cup dried cranberries
- 1 whole orange zest
- ½ cup cold butter, cut into tiny cubes
- ⅓ cup maple syrup
- ⅙ (½ of ⅓ cup) cup orange juice (from the same orange used for zest)
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
Glaze Topping (optional)
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- ¼ cup orange juice (from the same orange used for zest)
How to?
Into a large mixing bowl, add in all the dry ingredients, flour, salt, baking powder, cranberries, and orange zest. Mix well until everything is well mixed.
Add the cubed cold butter and using your hands, crumble up the flour mixture until tiny crumbs form. Note: the crumbs does not have to be the same size. The more crumbs there are (large size), the flakier the scone is.
Measure ⅓ cup of maple syrup and pour it into ½ measuring cup. Fill up the rest of the measuring up with orange juice and add in tsp of vanilla extract.
Pour the wet liquid mixture into the dry mixture. Using hand, mixed until a rough dried dough ball is form. Note: if dough is too dried and can’t form into a ball, add 1 tablespoon of orange juice at a time until the dough turns into a ball. Avoid too wet dough ball or the texture will be too cake like.
Place the dough ball onto a grease parchment paper and shape into a round ball that is ½ inch thick.
Chill the dough ball in the freezer for 30 minutes. This helps make the scones more flaky. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 425°F. If you can’t wait until 30 minutes, just bake the scone once the oven is preheated. The scone won’t turn out super flaky, but will still taste good.
Bake for 20–25 minutes. While scone baking, make the glaze by mixing powdered sugar and orange juice.
Remove scone from oven. Let them chill for at least 5 minutes or until touchable. Glaze the scone with the orange glaze and enjoy!
Tips and Tricks (Advices :P)
- According to King Arthur bread company, chilling the dough for 30 minute prior to baking produces a flakier scone because this step allows the gluten in the flour to relaxes. This also help the scone batter to rise better when bake. This method, tested in the RecipeRemix’s kitchen, actually works and produces a flakier scone.
- Feel free to add any additional toppings you like. Just make sure that the total amount of topping added equals to 1 cup. My favorite is ½ cup dried cranberries and ½ cup chocolate chunks.
- No fresh cranberries in this recipe because they are a mess to bake with. They leave big crater in the the scone because the cranberries tend to pop during baking. In addition, fresh cranberries are more tart, thus requires more sugar added to the recipe. Finally, they are not available all season and can be very hard to find in specific regions.
- Some scone recipes call for eggs. In this recipe, we omit the eggs because the eggs addition will make the scone more cake like. Eggs are often used in baking to create structure and stability in the batter and add moisture to the bake goods as well as add color and can be a substitution for baking soda and baking powder. Since scones are often flaky and dried, adding eggs will add to much moisture to the scone, which will result in a more cake like texture.
Education Time
In addition to eating food, I also enjoy learning about the history behind the food I eat. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of media that talks this subject, so here is quick scones history.
Scones originated from Scotland as this was consider a Scottish quick bread. It wasn’t really popular in England until the late 1700s when Anna, the Duchess of Bedford, asked for scone alongside with her tea during her afternoon tea time. Since then, scones are serve along with tea during English afternoon tea time.
Did you know there is a differences between the English scones and American scones? English scones are much drier (flakier), lighter (less butter), and less sweet and are often made plain, without mix dried fruits and nuts. This is due to fact that English scones are serve with butter and jam. American scones are like a dessert and are often made with a variety of mix dried fruits and nuts and topped of with a sweet glazed. This is American scones are meant to serve along with a side of coffee and tea. Here is a nice eggs lesson from thekitchn.com.
Fun Facts
- Originally scones were made with oats and bake in a griddle.
- Is it pronounced “scone” with “cone” or “con”? Well according to Oxford Dictionaries studies on what is the proper way to pronounce scone, the correct way depends on what country you are in. If you are in America, the correct way is “scone” with “cone” while in the UK, the correct way is “scone” with “con”.
- Scones are also known as Soda Bread in Irish.
- Some website refer to scone as biscuit, but apparently scones and biscuit is not the same thing. Biscuit is more flaky and light while a scone is drier and crumbly. Here is a fun article about the differences.
