Start by mixing up some quick dry ingredients. We have flour, baking powder, brown sugar, some spices, and a little salt. Use a whisk to mix those together until everything is incorporated. Then you’ll want to cut up some very cold butter (straight from the fridge) into small chunks. Since there’s not too much, I think hands work great here. Just gently flatten out the little pieces of butter and break them up into the dry ingredients. You can see I still have visible pieces of butter, and that’s important. You don’t want to overwork butter in scones or they’ll end flat, dry, and dense. Next you’ll whisk together your wet ingredients: pumpkin puree, vanilla, cream, and an egg.
Use a fork to gently pull the dough together. Don’t use any kind of mixer here; it just take a few seconds to mix up the dough by hand. Mix it until it just comes together. Gently pat the dough into a circle shape, about an inch or so thick. Use a pizza cutter to divide it into wedges. One thing I always do with scones, that I didn’t do here because I was distracted by picture taking, is to take a little of your cream and brush it over the top, then sprinkle with sugar (coarse sugar if you have it) before cutting them. It gives them a beautiful, sparkly sweet crust. You can bake them a couple of different ways. You can leave them in the circle just like I have below, only pulling them all away from each other just about an inch or so (to give them room to grow) and then pull them apart after baking, Or you can separate them all like this: Or – you can get one of these bad boys. Either way, bake them until they’re puffed and slightly golden. Scones dry out and become overcooked very easily once they’ve been in there a little too long, so make sure to check them with a toothpick and take them out as soon as that thing comes out without wet dough attached. While the scones are cooling on a rack, mix up a quick glaze. All you need is some powdered sugar, a little maple extract, and a little cream. Just whisk it all together, until you have a nice glaze-y consistency. Then drizzle it all over the place.
My favorite thing is how glaze creeps into the cracks and crevices on top. These are so yummy when eaten just a little warm, with softened butter slathered on there. Scones aren’t quite as sweet as say, a muffin, because you generally put yummy stuff on there like butter, jam, or maple glaze, so load it up!
They’re super amazing with pumpkin or apple butter, or the cinnamon maple butter I’ll share with you next week! You can also add chocolate chips or cinnamon chips if you want.
