Orange-Cranberries Scones are buttery, flaky and lightly sweetened biscuit-like rich pastry served for breakfast or afternoon snack with tea or coffee. They can be made ahead and are best when served warm, its wonderful aroma fills the home and brings the holiday warmth. Bake a batch of them on Friday evening and enjoy during the weekend.

The recipe (omitting orange and cranberries) is an excellent basic scone recipe for several other scones option. Follow the same procedure for lemon-blueberry, cherry almond, chocolate chip and many more scones. The hardest part of the recipe is hand grating the frozen butter but if you have a food processor with grater option (capacity: holds 3 cup or more), I would highly recommend using it for making the dough. Using frozen-grated or chopped butter is the key to perfect scones, the cold tiny pieces of butter creates pockets while baking that results in flaky – crumbly texture.

The lightly sweetened scones are often glazed with flavored or simple sugar syrup but its optional.

Makes: 12 2 inch roundels or 8 triangles
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Baking time: 15 minutes
Recipe: Allrecipes.com

Ingredients you’ll need:

2 cups All purpose flour
1/3 cup Sugar
1 tsp Baking powder
1/4 tsp Baking soda
1/2 tsp Salt
8 Tbsp frozen Butter
1/2 cup Cranberries
1 tsp Orange Zest
1/2 cup sour cream
1 Large egg

Preparation:

In a mixing bowl, add flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Grate frozen butter into flour mixture. Add a generous teaspoon of orange zest (finely grated orange rind) to the dry ingredients then stir in cranberries (I had forgot to add the cranberries while adding the orange zest, as seen in the pic below). Use your fingers to work in butter-flour mixture, once done it should resemble coarse meal or Semolina (rava). In a small bowl (I used the measuring cup used to measure sour cream) whisk sour cream and egg until smooth. Stir sour cream mixture into flour mixture. Using your hands, mix until large dough clumps form and gently pressing the dough against the bowl, form into a ball. The dough will be sticky in places, and there may not seem to be enough liquid at first, but as you press, the dough will come together.

Meanwhile, adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and pat into a 8- 9 inch circle about 3/4-inch thick. Sprinkle with 1 tsp. of sugar. You can either use a cookie cutter to cut small roundels or use a sharp knife to cut into 8 triangles. Place the cut scone dough about 1 inch apart on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake until golden, about 15 minutes.

Freshly baked scones just out of the oven. 

Cool for 5 minutes and serve, these are best when served warm, if you are making them ahead of time, warm in microwave or in a preheated oven.