Raspberry White Chocolate Scones

Yum

This past year, my Mom had a bumper crop of red raspberries in her garden. She gave me several huge bags of raspberries, and since there were so many I washed the berries and plopped them into the freezer.  And let me just say . . . I don’t think there is anything nicer than opening up your freezer in the dead of winter and seeing luscious, ruby red berries smiling up at you, just waiting to make your day better.  And these scones will totally make you want to grow your own raspberries– there is just something so comforting and delicious about a freshly baked scone and a cup of tea, over chat with a good friend.  Teatime may just become your favorite new tradition. 🙂

What are we waiting for?  Let’s do this!

Raspberry White Chocolate Scones

Ingredients:

2 cups all purpose flour

1/3 cup white sugar

1 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 stick butter or margarine, chilled

1 egg, beaten

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1/2 cup sour cream

3/4 cup red raspberries

1 1/2 cups white chocolate chips

Glaze Ingredients

2 cups powdered sugar

1-2 tbsp. milk, added gradually until icing reaches desired consistency

Directions:

Whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Cut in cold butter and stir in beaten egg, sour cream, and vanilla.  When dough comes together gently stir in raspberries and white chips.  Roll out dough to 1 inch thickness and cut into wedges or rounds.  Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes, until scones are golden brown and pass the toothpick test.  When scones have cooled, drizzle with glaze and allow to dry before serving.

Now, in pictures! 🙂

The beautiful magic that makes a scone puff up nice and light in the oven is BUTTAH.  Anytime you do a pie crust, or biscuit, or scone, you want to keep your butter or margarine nice and cold so that those little cold pieces of butter will swell and puff up in the oven.  This “puffiness” equals light and fluffy baked goods.  When your Grandma told you not to “handle the dough,” she knew what she was talking about.  Handling the dough too much makes the butter too warm, which means it has less “spring” in the oven, resulting in tough baked goods that don’t puff up into those flaky layers.

To avoid overworking the dough, I always use the Perfect Pie Blender.  I literally don’t know how I made biscuits, pie crust, scones . . . any kind of quick bread . . . before this little baby.  It cuts butter into your dough effortlessly (no more scrounging around with a fork or 2 knives.  You’re so welcome), and it gets the job done in about 10 seconds, which keeps your butter nice and cold so your baked goods stay nice and light and get that little oven spring when you bake them.  For 11 bucks I say treat yourself.  Your baked goods will breathe a sigh of relief.  You deserve it.

Next use a wooden spoon to stir in your beaten egg, vanilla, and sour cream.  Now, I’m warning you– this part is hard.  It will seem like there is NO WAY ON EARTH that there is ever going to be enough moisture for this dough to come together.  Your arm muscles will scream in pain, and you will say “I need to add milk!  This is impossible!”

Don’t do it.  Trust me. Give yourself amazing biceps and keep slowly mixing in the moisture.  Scrape the sour cream off your spoon if you have to.  It will come together.  Be patient.  When you’re done the dough will still have some crumbles, but it will come together when you squeeze a handful of crumbs.

Once you have some “sticky crumbs,” go ahead and mix in your raspberries and white chips.  I like to freeze raspberries when they’re on sale and throw them in frozen. That way the juice doesn’t turn the scones as pink as the fresh ones do.  The cold berries also seem to help keep my butter nice and cold, which gives us the . . . (altogether now!) oven spring!

See?  How pretty is that gorgeous ruby color for Christmas or Valentine’s day breakfast?

Next roll out your dough on a lightly floured surface to about 1″ thick and either cut some circles or make one large circle and cut wedges with a pizza cutter.  Bake the scones on a silpat-lined baking sheet at 375 for 20-25 minutes until they are nice and golden brown.  When the scones are finished baking, let them cool on a cooling sheet until you’re ready to glaze them.

Speaking of glaze, let’s talk GLAZE.  I like to take the powdered sugar and slowly mix in milk until the glaze is about the consistency that I want.  If you use skim or 1% milk, you won’t need as much milk.  If you use whole milk you may need a squidge more.  Just add the milk slowly and keep mixing until it’s smooth and the consistency that is thick enough to “stick” to your scone, but thin enough to drizzle.

Here is another reason to use a silpat— you can drizzle your scones right on the same baking sheet, let them dry, and then wipe off the mess.  Presto.  Done.  You are oh-so-welcome.

 

Once the scones have dried (or before they have– let’s live dangerously . . .), serve a bright, sunny plate of these little beauties with some coffee or tea.

Yes.  It should definitely be tea, now that I think about it.  You can sip your tea and say “Good show!” and call them “scons.”  You can hum “God Save the Queen.”  You can watch a replay of the Royal Wedding.  I’m so obsessed with England that I named my blog after it, for Pete’s sake.  Hail Britannia!

But whatever you decide to call them, these scones really are delicious.  With those chunks of luscious berry goodness and chips of white chocolate, they could almost be the star of the show, if you let them . . .

Too bad there is already a brighter star here– and it’s you!  (Cue: AWWWWWW!!!!)

Because you did it.  And I’m just so proud of you.

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