Clementine Scones

This weekend I bought a new electric kettle for my kitchen and as a result I spent the weekend drinking tea. Then, yesterday morning I woke up to a grey and rainy day and decided to have a proper English afternoon tea, which meant I needed some scones. I have never made scones before so I started searching around the internet for some ideas and was immediately overwhelmed by hundreds of different variations. Ultimately, I went with a recipe that required me to buy the fewest ingredients. As I had just bought a box of clementines, the clementine scones from Bon Appetit won out.  

The recipe was simple and the results were fantastic, though I would maybe look for a recipe that uses less butter if I did it again. The recipe calls for you to mix the ingredients together by hand, but I used an electric mixer to add the butter and it worked well. 

The scone recipe makes 12 scones, which is way more than I can, or should, eat. However, once you have placed the scones on the baking sheet you can place the sheet in the freezer. After the scone dough is frozen you can place the scones into a heavy duty ziplock bag and they will stay for up to two months. When you're ready to cook your them, all you need to do is place the frozen scones in the oven, no defrosting necessary.

Clementine Scones - Makes 12 scones

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Ingredients

3 1/2 c. all purpose flour

1/2 c. sugar

3 3/4 tsp. baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 cup (2 sticks) chilled unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

3/4 c. buttermilk

2 tbsp. finely grated clementine peel (for me this was about 3 clementines zested)

1 large egg, beaten for the glaze

Preparation
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and line baking sheets with parchment paper. 

Mix together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda. Once mixed add in the butter and with your hands, or with a hand-held mixer, mix the butter until the ingredients become like crumbs.

In a small bowl mix together the buttermilk and the clementine peel. Add the buttermilk and clementine peel to the dry ingredients, kneed the ingredients together until a dough forms. 

Gather the dough into a ball and cut it in half. Take one half of the dough and flatten it into a circle that is about 3/4 of an inch thick. Cut the round into six wedges and place them on a baking sheet at least 2 inches apart. Do the same with the second half of the dough and place it on the second baking sheet.

 

Brush the scones with the beaten egg and sprinkle with raw sugar. 

Bake scones until golden and until a tester toothpick comes out clean, around 15 minutes (it took about 18 in my oven). Serve with tea and butter, or clotted cream if you have it.