Cinnamon Chip Scones

So, you know that coffee shop down the street? You know the one I’m talking about.

Ever tried their Cinnamon Chip Scones? Want to know what’s in them?

Get a load of these ingredients:

flour (wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), brown sugar, whole eggs, butter (cream [from milk]), buttermilk (milk, condensed skim milk, salt, buttermilk culture), heavy cream (milk, mono- and diglycerides, carageenan, polysorbate 80), cinnamon chips (sugar, corn syrup, palm oil, cinnamon, agar gum, natural flavor, caramel color, soy lecithin), powdered sugar (sugar, cornstarch), palm oil shortening, rice starch, baking powder (sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium bicarbonate, cornstarch, monocalcium phosphate), emulsifier (mono – and diglycerides, citric acid), starch, water, sea salt, cinnamon flavor, corn syrup, caramel color, icing stabilizer (gum acacia, xanthan gum, modified gum acacia), cinnamon.

Come on, who wouldn’t want xanthan gum and polysorbate 80 for breakfast. Please pass the emulsifier! And can someone please explain to me why cinnamon “flavor” gets higher billing than regular cinnamon?

See those lovely scones pictured above?

Here are the ingredients:

Flour, Sugar, Buttermilk (yes I made these before it expired, I promise!), egg, cinnamon chips*, butter, salt, baking powder, baking soda, vanilla, and cinnamon.

*If you have any desire to make these scones or anything else with Cinnamon Chips, I encourage you to go to your store and stock up NOW. For some unknown reason, most stores only carry them during the holiday season. Buy a couple of extra bags and toss them in the freezer. They’ll be just fine and there when you need them.

Click HERE for a Handy-Dandy Shopping List

This is a great basic scone recipe. It uses buttermilk instead of heavy cream so you can feel slightly better about eating half the batch right when they come out of the oven.

If cinnamon isn’t your thing, I use this same recipe for blueberry scones (also great with a little lemon zest), orange cranberry scones, raspberry white chocolate scones (add a little almond extract to these for additional zip)…you get the idea.

Let’s make scones! (please read the remainder of the recipe with a British accent. Thank you.)

Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees.

In a large bowl, sift together 2-1/2 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 Tablespoon Baking Powder, and 1 teaspoon Baking Soda.

Sift, Sift, Sift. Sifting helps lighten the flour, makes sure the other dry ingredients are all mixed in thoroughly and ensures that you won’t have lumpy scones.

Add 1/2 cup Sugar to the flour mixture.

Do you have one of these hiding in the bottom kitchen drawer?

It’s a pastry blender and a great time saver for working butter into flour. Mine is nice and old and came from my grandma’s house. I love it hope to never own a new one.

Take 1/2 stick (4 Tablespoons) of COLD butter and cut it into little small squares.

Add the butter to the flour mixture and using your pastry blender or 2 forks or even your clean little fingers, work the butter into the flour until you have small lumps about the size and texture of oatmeal.

If you’re using the pastry blender, work it through the bowl making little 45 degree turns with your wrist to chop the butter up into the flour.

If  you’re using your fingers, just remember to work quickly and don’t over do it. We want little blobs of butter in the flour so be sure you’re not heating things up too much with your fingers. If you’ve ever made a crisp or streusel topping, this is the same idea.

Crack an egg into a small bowl and give it a quick whip with a fork just to break up the yolk.

Add 3/4 cup of buttermilk to the egg and stir to combine.

Then add 1/2 teaspoon of pure vanilla. Get the real stuff please. Life is too short to use fake vanilla.

Make a little well in the middle of your dry ingredients and pour  in the buttermilk egg mixture.

Give this a gentle stir just to combine the ingredients. If there is still a little unincorporated flour, that is okay, we are going to mix more later.

If you are using Cinnamon Chips, Chocolate Chips, Berries, Nuts, etc. it’s a good idea to mix them with just a little bit ( 1 Tablespoon or so) of flour so that they don’t all clump together in the bottom of your mixing bowl.

Then add the chips (I have 3/4 cup here) to your scone batter. At this point, I think it is easiest to mix with your nice clean hands. Work the dough until all of the flour is incorporated and the chips are mixed in. Don’t go all crazy and over mix, just get everything together.

Put a little flour on a counter top or other work surface, gather all the dough in a ball and turn it out of the bowl. You don’t really need to knead this dough but if you’re having trouble getting everything mixed in one or two quick kneads is totally fine.

Now, using your hands, simply flatten the dough ball out into a disc. Pat it to about 1/2 – 1 inch thick.

Helpful hint:  I should have tossed just a tiny bit more flour on top of the dough. That would have made cutting easier.

If you have a certain shape you like your scones, go for it. They can be squares, circles, free form blobs, triangles, whatever you prefer.

I made pretty sizable triangles by cutting wedges out of the circle. If you want smaller triangles, shape your dough into a rectangle rather than a circle and use your great geometry skills.

Put the scones on a lightly greased baking sheet or one of those fancy pants baking mats if you have one. (Pssst…great Christmas gift idea if you know someone who likes to bake.)

For even more cinnamony goodness, mix about 1 Tablespoon of sugar with a heaping teaspoon of cinnamon and sprinkle it over the top of the scones.

Bake at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes until golden brown, puffed up and yummy.

Allow the scones to cool on a wire rack. ACCIDENTLY break one and be forced to eat the warm, delicious evidence.

Cinnamon Chip Scones. Made with love, not xanthan gum.

Here’s the recipe!

Cinnamon Chip Scones