By Mid-April. Lockdown week four. The household has settled into the small steady rhythm a multi-week lockdown produces when there is no work to commute to and no school to drive to and no errands beyond the every-other-Tuesday grocery run to IGA. Mama has been on the Tuesday-Wednesday-Friday Dollar General schedule. I have been at home. Dustin has been working four-day weeks at the HVAC shop. Cody has been at the halfway house. The plea is five weeks out.
Saturday morning I pulled Carol’s 1985 cherry chip scone card out of the green metal recipe box because the card had come up next in the box-rotation and Saturday was a Saturday Mama had off and the kitchen wanted a small bake. The scones are a buttermilk drop scone with dried cherries and white chocolate chips folded into the dough, brushed with cream and sprinkled with turbinado sugar before baking. Twenty minutes at four hundred. The scones are tender, slightly sweet, with little jewels of cherry-and-chocolate visible in the cross-section.
Mama had two with her coffee at the kitchen table. I had one. Mrs. Henderson got four delivered to her front porch in a small paper bag at ten AM (she texted me at ten-fifteen: baby, these are the kind of scone my mother would have charged a dollar for in 1953). Aunt Linda got two via the small package I dropped at her door Sunday afternoon on the way home from a small walk Mama and I took through the neighborhood (we had been walking the four-block neighborhood loop daily across the lockdown, the way the lockdown had forced everybody onto small walking routines). The scones disappeared by Monday.
Cherry Chip Scones
Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 18 min | Total Time: 33 min | Servings: 8
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) cold butter, cut into small cubes
- 1/2 cup buttermilk
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup dried cherries, roughly chopped
- 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips
- 1 tablespoon heavy cream, for brushing
- 1 tablespoon coarse sugar, for topping
Instructions
- Preheat oven. Heat oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
- Mix dry ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt until evenly combined.
- Cut in butter. Add cold butter cubes to the flour mixture. Using a pastry cutter or your fingertips, work the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse crumbles with some pea-sized pieces remaining. Do not overwork — cold butter is key to flaky scones.
- Combine wet ingredients. In a small bowl or measuring cup, whisk together buttermilk, egg, and vanilla extract.
- Bring the dough together. Pour the wet ingredients over the butter-flour mixture and stir gently with a fork just until a shaggy dough forms. Fold in the dried cherries and mini chocolate chips until evenly distributed. Do not overmix.
- Shape and cut. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and gently pat into a circle about 3/4 inch thick. Cut into 8 equal wedges with a sharp knife or bench scraper.
- Prepare for baking. Transfer wedges to the prepared baking sheet, spacing them about 2 inches apart. Brush the tops lightly with heavy cream and sprinkle with coarse sugar.
- Bake. Bake for 16 to 18 minutes, until the tops are lightly golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool on the pan for 5 minutes before serving.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 340 | Protein: 5g | Fat: 15g | Carbs: 47g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 220mg