These easy Cherry scones made with glacé cherry are so flaky and delicious. This homemade scones recipe is so simple, no eggs or buttermilk is needed, and it takes only 15-20 minutes to be ready.
Cherry scones aren’t just the perfect companions to your evening teas but also the answer to your post-dinner dessert cravings! That’s right.
If you’ve got a sweet tooth and love keeping small snackable desserts around the house, then this Cherry Scones recipe will allow you to do just that. These crispy baked goodies are crispy and crumbly from the outside, yet absolutely delectably soft and chewy on the inside.
They are not just an easy-to-grab snack around the house, they’re also relatively easy to make in the kitchen. Keep reading to find out how!
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What are Cherry Scones?
Scones are the brothers of bread and the cousins of biscuits. Scones are sometimes sweet, often also salty pieces of baked goods that are popularly served with tea in Britain.
They’re crackly when you take a bite, only to reveal soft bread on the inside. Oftentimes, like the recipe we’re making today, they’ve also got some fruits folded in. Other times, they’re plain, so you can top them with some fruit jam and whipped cream or other toppings of your choice.
What’s in the Cherry Scones?
Cherry Scones are made from a total of 6 ingredients, which are:
Plain flour: Also called ‘all-purpose’ flour.
Baking powder: Just what you’ve got at home.
Butter: Salted or unsalted works since this recipe has a little bit of salt.
Caster sugar: The mid-point between powdered sugar and granulated sugar.
Glacé cherries: These are candied cherries you can get at the store.
Milk: Whatever you have at home will work just fine.
How to make these Cherry Scones – Step By Step
One: Before we begin with our preparation of the scones, preheat the oven to 180°C/356°F. Then, line a baking tray with parchment paper. Once that’s out of the way, you can take out a mixing bowl and start.
Two: In the bowl, mix flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt until it is well combined.
Three: Add the frozen butter and rub it into the flour mixture with your hands until the mixture starts to look like crumbles.
Four: Fold in the glace cherries.
Five: Now, add the milk and mix just to combine. Dust your counter with some flour. Then, transfer the dough to the floured surface, and roll it until it is about 2cm thick.
Six: Use a cookie cutter to cut out the scones. Finally, move them onto the baking sheet we had laid out earlier.
Seven: Brush the tops of the scones with milk and then move to the preheated oven. Let the scones bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes or until they are a beautiful golden brown.
That’s it! Your tea-side delicacies are ready to gobble.
Top Tips!
- If you haven’t got a cookie cutter, you can use a drinking glass with sharp edges that have about a 3-inch opening to cut the scones into shape.
- Placing the scones a little close together (about one inch apart) on the parchment paper will have them snuggle when they rise, giving them nice soft yet flaky edges.
- We’re using frozen butter, but if you want to really win the game chill the mixing bowl and cookie cutter/glass as well.
- You can also chill the dough for a little while before placing it in the oven. The reason why we’re advising you to chill the dough, ingredients, and even utensils is that the cold temperature relaxes the gluten. Relaxed gluten results in the tender texture of the scones, and chilled butter give them flakiness.
- Whatever fruit you use (as suggested in the recipe variation section below) make sure it’s not too juicy, it may make the bread too moist. If you’re using frozen fruit, thaw the fruit, rinse well and drain. If the fruit is frozen individually, however, there is no need to thaw.
Recipe Variations
- Suppose you can’t get your hand on cherries, or just don’t like them. In this case, you can use any choice of frozen or glazed fruit. Strawberries, cranberries, and blueberries are great alternatives.
- You don’t always have to load your sweet scones with fruit. You can fill them up with peanut butter, chocolate chips, or even raisins.
- If you’d like your scones plain, you can leave them plain and top them with fruit jams after they are baked.
- If you skip the sugar in the scones, you can make them completely savoury by topping them with cream cheese and a little bacon on the side.
The secret to good scones
- Use butter very cold or frozen.
- Don’t overwork the batter.
- To get flaky scones, make them at least 2cm thick.
Serving Suggestions
Scones are classically served with afternoon or evening tea in Britain. Nonetheless, they are easy-to-grab snacks that can be doubled as a great dessert after lunch or dinner. Just top them with some whipped cream, honey, jam, chocolate syrup, fresh fruits, or any other sweet topping of your choice.
If you’re going for something a little more savoury, then top it with cream cheese or guacamole. You can also serve it with some scrambled eggs.
Storage
Make ahead of time: You can’t make the batter of scones ahead of time, as with any other baked good, as the rising agents need to remain active when they’re plopped in the oven. You can bake them and keep them in an air-tight container at room temperature for 1 to 2 days without any texture changes, though.
Store: You can store this at room temperature for 1 to 2 days, and in the fridge 3-4 days. However, they should be sealed in an air-tight bag or container.
Freeze: Placed in air-tight bags or containers, they will last in the freezer for about 1-2 months. No more than that.
To reheat: Take the scones out of the freezer, either defrost them at room temperature for an hour or simply defrost them in the microwave. Then you can reheat them in the oven or microwave for some fresh and crispy bites of scones.
Recipe FAQ
Just as it is important to knead the dough well, you need to be sure that you don’t overwork the dough. Overworking the dough can cause your scones to turn out hard. What you need to do is, use very light hands to knead the dough and stop when all the ingredients are combined evenly. That way your dough won’t be under or overworked.
The consistency of your batter should be neither wet nor dry. The Scone batter is the midpoint between a batter and dough. It will leave your fingers a little sticky and moist, unlike when you’re working with dough. However, it won’t be a liquid-like consistency as a batter either. It’s a fair balance between both.
If your scones rise unevenly, there could be two reasons for it. First, the dough probably wasn’t rolled evenly, before it was cut. To ensure that the dough is even, carefully apply pressure evenly on the rolling pin while rolling out the dough.
The second reason that your scones turned out uneven is that the rising agent wasn’t distributed evenly throughout the dough. So kneading the dough long enough for the rising agent to get diffused into the dough proportionally is also very important.
Don’t knead the dough; otherwise, it will come out dry and will not rise up. Also, use good quality baking powder and make sure it’s not expired.
They will keep fresh at room temperature for 1-2 days, in the fridge for 3-4 days and in the freezer for 1-2 months as long as you keep them in an airtight container.
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Recipe
Cherry Scones
Ingredients
- 2 ¾ cups plain flour
- 1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ¼ cup caster sugar
- ½ cup butter , cold, cut into cubes
- ½ cup glacé cherries , roughly chopped
- ¾ cup milk
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180°C/356°F and line a baking tray with parchment pepper.
- In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, sugar and salt until combined.
- Rub the butter into the flour mixture with your hands until the mixture becomes like crumbles.
- Fold in cherries.
- Now, add the milk and mix just to combine, then transfer the dough to the floured surface, and roll it until about 2cm thick.
- Use a cookie cutter to cut out the scones and move them into the baking sheet.
- Brush the tops with milk and then bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes until golden.
Notes
- If you haven’t got a cookie cutter, you can use a drinking glass with sharp edges that have about a 3-inch opening to cut the scones into shape.
- Placing the scones a little close together (about one inch apart) on the parchment paper will have them snuggle when they rise, giving them nice soft yet flaky edges.
- We’re using frozen butter, but if you want to really win the game chill the mixing bowl and cookie cutter/glass as well.
- You can also chill the dough for a little while before placing it in the oven. The reason why we’re advising you to chill the dough, ingredients, and even utensils is that the cold temperature relaxes the gluten. Relaxed gluten results in the tender texture of the scones, and chilled butter give them flakiness.
- Whatever fruit you use (as suggested in the recipe variation section below) make sure it’s not too juicy, it may make the bread too moist. If you’re using frozen fruit, thaw the fruit, rinse well and drain. If the fruit is frozen individually, however, there is no need to thaw.
Variations
- Suppose you can’t get your hand on cherries, or just don’t like them. In this case, you can use any choice of frozen or glazed fruit. Strawberries, cranberries, and blueberries are great alternatives.
- You don’t always have to load your sweet scones with fruit. You can fill them up with peanut butter, chocolate chips, or even raisins.
- If you’d like your scones plain, you can leave them plain and top them with fruit jams after they are baked.
- If you skip the sugar in the scones, you can make them completely savoury by topping them with cream cheese and a little bacon on the side.
Julia
The glacé is too sweet for me; can I use fresh cherry?
Radwa
Yes, you can.
Ember
So easy for breakfast; I like to make a big batch for the whole week’s breakfast.