White Chocolate Cherry Scones – Day 3 of Chocolate Week

These may not look like much, but boy, were they good!  My usual go-to scone recipe is one by Dorie Greenspan, namely her Cream Scones.  But, cream has a lot more calories than buttermilk, and I wanted to expand my repertoire, so I dug up this recipe and fiddled with it a bit.  I added lemon zest, white chocolate, and dried cherries, plus a little extra sugar.  I am not a big fan of really sweet stuff (usually), but I increased the sugar because I served these with a brunch and I needed something sweeter than these scones would have been had I followed the recipe exactly.

Two tips:  leave the white chocolate in big chunks or it will melt into the batter, or use white chocolate chips, which will hold their shape better.  Finally, these scones rise quite a bit, so if you make 8 scones out of the recipe, as I did, they will be big.  These are definitely on the repeat list!

Buttermilk Scones
Adapted from a recipe by Mary Sue Milliken & Susan Feniger

• 3 cups unbleached flour
• 1/3 cup sugar+ 1 Tablespoon, plus extra for sprinkling
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
• 1 cup buttermilk
• zest of one lemon
• 1/2 cup dried cherries (optional)
• 1/2 cup white chocolate chips, or chunks (roughly chopped)
• 1 tablespoon heavy cream, for brushing

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Combine the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and lemon zest in bowl of a food processor. Add butter and pulse to a coarse meal. Add buttermilk and mix just until combined.  Remove batter from bowl and gently add cherries and white chocolate.

Transfer dough to a floured board. Roll to 3/4 inch thick round. Cut round into 8 wedges and place slightly separated on a greased baking sheet. Brush the tops with the cream, sprinkle with sugar, and bake for 15 minutes, or until lightly browned.  Mine took about 30 minutes to brown, but I started watching them at 15 minutes.  Serve warm – these are so good they didn’t need any extra butter.