The past three weeks have been a lot busier than I expected them to be! I posted about the macarons I tried to make for the refreshments after my son’s concert on April 8th. Those all ended up being eaten up by my family. Instead, I made chocolate chip cookies, Mary Berry’s lemon drizzle traybake, and sugar cookie custard fruit mini-tarts for the refreshments, all with the help of my mother-in-law. I really could not have made all of those desserts without her help.
And then, just to make things more crazy for myself, we had an early Easter lunch at our house on April 15th. So most of the week before that, I spent prepping the house and the food for Saturday. I’m glad I didn’t have to make all the food for Easter lunch! I did make a strawberry limeade cake with white chocolate buttercream frosting for one of our Easter desserts; I’m not sure if it tasted good or not because I only got one slice! I will try to post about that bake soon.
This past week was spring break for my kids from homeschooling. We drove to a nearby resort and it was so much fun! I had the chance to play with my kids, which is something I don’t always get to do. It was actually pretty nice to take a break from baking. But now, I am ready to get back to baking again.
In February, I made orange-cranberry scones with white chocolate chips for the ladies’ tea room at our church’s Leadership Conference and never wrote down the recipe, so today, I decided to make it again. This time, I kept track of all my ingredients.
I was making smaller orange-cranberry scones (but not quite mini-size) so I chopped my white chocolate chips and using a pair of scissors, I snipped my dried cranberries into smaller pieces. I also soaked my dried cranberries in a little bit of water and an 1/8 tsp of orange extract before mixing them into the dough, just to make sure they weren’t too dry after baking in the scones. I never fully mix my dough in the bowl because I am afraid of overmixing.
I dumped the dough out onto a floured surface and worked the rest of the flour into the dough using my hands.
It doesn’t take too long for the dough to come together like this. Maybe 5 to 10 minutes.
I doubled my usual scone recipe and patted the dough out into a rectangle that was around 16 inches by 9 inches. I wanted it to be 24 inches by 6 inches, but I didn’t want to pat the dough out too thin. The 16 x 9 rectangle was probably easier to work with anyway.
I used a bench cutter and a ruler to divide the rectangle as evenly as possible. My cuts along the longer side were 2 inches apart, while the shorter side had 3 inch cuts. As shown above, there were 41 scones. I did end up with some orange-cranberry scones that were larger than others or were an odd shape.
When will I learn not to bake two cookie sheets at once? This was my second bake of the day and I was ready to be done, but I should have been more patient and baked only one sheet at a time. Because of my impatience, most of the scones in this batch ended up almost burned on the bottom. They weren’t so burned we couldn’t eat them though, so I was glad of that.
I did like the golden brown color on top of the overbaked scones though! Maybe next time, I will use the convection feature on my oven when I bake these.
I made my usual powdered sugar glaze to drizzle over the scones and added about an 1/8 tsp of orange extract to the glaze just to give it more orange flavor.
I was afraid that the orange flavor would be too subtle, but my oldest son said he was able to taste the orange. Twelve of these orange-cranberry scones (the nicest ones I could pick out that weren’t burnt) went to our church bookstore, but the rest stayed with us for breakfast. They were gone by this morning, and I have to confess that I was the one who probably ate most of them because they tasted so good!
Orange-Cranberry Scones with White Chocolate Chips
Ingredients
Scones:
- 4 cup all-purpose flour
- 2 tbsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 6 tbsp sugar
- 10 tbsp unsalted butter, cold
- 2 cup heavy cream (note: if desired, add the juice of the orange used for zest to a measuring cup then add the heavy cream to the measuring cup until you have 2 cups total of liquid)
- 1 cup dried cranberries, soaked in water or orange juice and drained, snipped into smaller pieces
- 1 cup white chocolate chips or chopped white chocolate
- zest of 1 orange
- 1/4 tsp orange extract
- 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
Icing:
- 3/4 cup powdered sugar
- 3 tsp heavy cream (use up to 5 tsp if needed)
- 3 tsp water (use up to 5 tsp if needed)
- 1/8 tsp orange extract
Instructions
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
- Mix together dry ingredients in a large bowl; flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, and orange zest. Using a pastry blender, cut in the butter to coat pieces with flour. The mixture should look like coarse crumbs. Make a well in the center of the bowl and pour in the heavy cream, orange extract, and vanilla extract.
- Fold everything together just to incorporate as much of the flour as possible; do not overwork. Fold the cranberries (make sure to drain off any extra liquid from the cranberries) and chopped white chocolate into the dough.
- Dump the dough out of the bowl onto a floured surface. Knead the dough lightly until it comes together and there are no more streaks of flour in the dough.
- Pat the dough out into a 16 in. x 9 in. rectangle. Using a bench cutter, make cuts along the longer side at every 2 inches, and along the shorter side at every 3 inches. You will end up with around 42 small scones if cut this way. If you want larger scones, cut along the longer side every 4 inches and the the shorter side every 3 inches. For either size, then cut each resulting rectangle along the diagonal to make triangles.
- Use the bench cutter to transfer each scone to cookie sheets lined with parchment paper. Brush the top of each scone with heavy cream and bake the scones one sheet at a time on the center rack of the oven for 12 – 15 minutes (15-20 minutes if making the larger scones), until golden brown.
- Let scones cool on a wire rack before drizzling glaze over them.
To make the icing drizzle:
- To make the icing, mix together 3/4 cup powdered sugar, 3 tsp of heavy cream, and orange extract. Add 1 tsp of water at a time and mix until the icing is your desired consistency.
It sounds like you did an amazing amount of baking. Whenever I’m tempted to bake 2 cookie sheets at a time I remember the bad results I’ve had in the past … and don’t. But with a large family and probably just wanting to get the baking done as quickly as you could, you took a chance. They sound like great tasting scones. So many delicious ingredients.
I’m glad you had a chance to take a break with your children before getting back to homeschooling and baking. Only 40 or so teaching days left for me. 🙂
I was glad that they still tasted decent even though they were slightly burnt! I had baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies before the scones and yes, I definitely wanted to be done so that I could feed my kids lunch 🙂 spring break was greatly needed for the kids and me! I was glad we were able to go on just a little getaway for a few days.
Beautiful combination in those scones! (:
Thank you! I think these might be my favorite scones. I visited your blog: everything looks so delicious! So I’m following you now 🙂 I often need inspiration for cooking since baking is my love
Thank you so much! Very much appreciated (:followed you back.
I love that you are always referencing Mary Berry! She is the best part of GBB–i love the way her eyes travel to far away places when she bites into a delicious pastry….! 🙂 These scones look incredible, thank you for the step by step info. My scones have always turned out too dry so I am hoping following along will help me in my kitchen experiments!
The Great British Bakeoff was my inspiration to up my baking skill 🙂 and where I first heard about macarons! I love Mary Berry too 🙂 finishing up mixing your scone dough with your hands is a little messy but it is definitely what works for me! I treat it a little bit like pie crust. I hope this method will work for you!
These scones look so delicious!
Looks so delicious! 🙂