A good cheese scone should be crunchy on the outside, incredibly soft and fluffy on the
inside and filled with savoury cheddar cheese. These scones tick all those boxes and bonus
they are quick and easy to make. Welcome to recipes by carina where I share with you how
to make classic and simply delicious recipes, make sure to follow my page or subscribe for
a new recipe each week.
Start with your dry ingredients. In a large sized mixing bowl measure out your flour.
You’ll need 3 cups or 375g of standard or all purpose flour. You’ll notice I give
the measurements in cups and grams so no matter where you live in the world you should find
this recipe easy enough to follow. If you would like the full recipe for these scones
a printable or screenshot version will be on my website as well as the full measurements
listed in the description box below.
Next measure out two tablespoons of baking powder and add it to the bowl. It’s a lot
of baking powder but it’s how these scones are so light and fluffy! Make sure not to
mix it up with baking soda here or you’ll scones will be so bitter and awful, its an
easy mistake but makes a huge difference in the final product.
Ever since I posted the recipe for English Scones served with jam and cream I’ve gotten
so many questions and requests for how to make cheese scones. The recipes are pretty
similar with a few tweaks here and there. Let me in the comments below which is your
favourite, plain scones with jam and cream or cheese scones with butter? I would definitely
be in team cheese, you just can’t beat a good cheese scone.
Finally for the dry ingredients add a good few pinches of salt, not too much here as
the scones will get more salt from the cheese as well as a 1/4 tsp of cayenne pepper. The
cayenne pepper adds a wonderful kind of bite to the scones, they’re definitely not spicy
at all so you don’t need to worry about that, but only add more if your a fan of some
heat.
Give the dry ingredients a good mix together with a wooden spoon before we move on to the
remaining ingredients.
Next we’ll need 60g, 1/4 cup, 4 Tbsp or 1/2 a stick of butter. Make sure you butter
is straight out of the fridge for this recipe, we don’t want any chance of it melting so
as cold as possible is best.
Using a knife cut the butter up into smaller pieces and add it to the bowl with the dry
ingredients. Using clean dry hands work the butter into the flour with your finger tips.
Alternately you can use a pastry cutter or a dough cutter but it’s so fast and easy
with your hands.
What we’re doing here is getting all of the flour coated in the butter, this creates
a kind of barrier around the flour so when the scones are in the oven, the butter melts
and it creates that fluffy, flakey texture that marks a really good scone. Doing this
also helps prohibit gluten development in the flour which is what stops the scones turning
into a more bread like texture which we don’t want.
If at any stage during this you can start to feel the butter melting, whether that’s
because you live in a hot climate or your finger tips are just too hot place the whole
bowl in the fridge for about 15 minutes. We really want the butter to be super cold here
so be careful of it melting.
This recipe will make 6 large cheese scones or 8 smaller scones, if you would like you
can easily halve the recipe to make 4 small or 3 large. The same goes for doubling if
you have a lot more people to feed. Also think of scones as a base recipe, there are so many
different flavours you can add or keep them simple and delicious. A few favourites are
bacon pieces, olives, jalapeños, sun-dried tomatoes, feta or caramelised onions. The
options are pretty much endless.
You can see here the kind of texture that you want. A few smaller pieces of butter is
fine but make sure you don’t have any larger clumps as they won’t mix into the scone
batter well.
To make these the best ever cheese scones you want to choose your cheese carefully.
We want a strong cheddar, not a more mellow like mozzarella as it won’t have any good
flavour that will come through. Grate about 2 cups yourself, stay away from pre shredded
for this recipe as the cheese is coated in starch so it doesn’t stick together but
this just means that it won’t melt down well into the scones and has a bit of a weird
texture.
Add the cheese to the bowl and use your wooden spoon to combine the ingredients together.
This is also the time you would add any extras, or you can also add them a bit later if you
just want them through the centre of the scones.
Once the cheese is evenly mixed through, lastly we’ll need 1 cup or 250ml of milk. Whole
milk works best for this recipe but you could use any alternatives if you would like here.
Gently fold the scone dough together with a spoon. Be really careful here not to over
mix, we want to work with scones as least as possible, this keep them super soft. You’ll
probably have a pretty dry looking dough but don’t add any more milk as it will start
to come together.
Once it’s started to form kind of in one piece, tip it out on to your work surface.
You won’t need to add any flour here, it shouldn’t stick.
Start to fold it over itself a few times like I am doing here, this helps to create those
layers to your scones as well as kind of mixes the ingredients better together if you have
any any dry bits left behind. If you do want to add any extras through the centre this
is the best time to do it. Shape it into a really long rectangle and add your extras
like feta cheese and caramelised onion to one half, fold the scone dough over on itself,
kind of like a sandwich.
If you’re not adding any extras shape it into a rectangle, doesn’t need to be precise
and cut it into 6 or 8 scones. Alternatively you can use a cookie cutter if you want them
to look a bit more uniform but I prefer the rustic look for cheese scones as this way
is so much faster.
Place the cheese scones onto a lined baking sheet, spacing them well apart as they will
puff up a lot in the oven. You can see those layers that I was talking about before from
folding the scone dough over itself a few times.
Use a pastry brush and brush the tops of the scones with a little milk, this helps them
brown really beautifully. Alternatively you could also use an egg wash but the milk does
a good job and finally top with a little extra shredded cheese.
Bake the scones in a 220C or 420F oven for about 20-25 minutes or until they’ve puffed
up and are a deep golden brown. If you have made the scones smaller they will need closer
to 15 minutes. Let the scones cool for a few minutes on the baking sheet before transferring
to a wire rack to cool completely.
These scones are definitely best the day you make them but they will keep for 3 days in
an airtight container at room temperature. It’s best to reheat them slightly in the
oven or microwave for a few seconds to freshen them up before serving.
I hope you try out these delicious cheese scones, they are honestly the best! Thank
you for watching and I will see you in my next video.