Savory Whole-Wheat Buttermilk Scones With Rosemary and Thyme Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is better for scones buttermilk or heavy cream? ›

Heavy Cream or Buttermilk: For the best tasting pastries, stick with a thick liquid such as heavy cream or buttermilk. I usually use heavy cream, but if you want a slightly tangy flavor, use buttermilk.

Pack the scones closely on the baking tray so they will support each other as they rise rather than spreading. Make scones the day you need them – they taste far better warm.

These melt-in-the-mouth cheese scones make a perfect accompaniment to a homemade soup or stew. Alternatively, they're great on their own with a slather of butter, for a quick savoury treat.

A: Baking powder is a very important raising agent for this recipe since it leavens the whole recipe mixture instead of just flour. Therefore, with all other heavy ingredients involved, it's necessary to use a lot of baking powder to give the scones a decent rise. You can reduce it but your results will be denser.

Baking tips for making the perfect scones

The colder the better when it comes to scones, we recommend a chilled bowl and pastry cutter too. Use pastry flour: This will create a noticeably lighter scone. However, self-raising flour works just as well and creates a higher rising scone that holds its shape nicely.

We recommend using all-purpose flour. There is some debate as to what flour one should use to go around achieving the perfect scone. This is because within different flours comes different levels of protein. Typically, if there is a higher protein level within a flour, the more dense the scone would come out.

Recipes for scones sometimes provide a make-ahead option that involves refrigerating the dough overnight so it can simply be shaped and then popped into the oven the next day. But now we've found that resting the dough overnight has another benefit: It makes for more symmetrical and attractive pastries.

Not chilling the dough before baking: to really ace your scones, it helps to chill your dough again before it's baked. Using cold ingredients does help, but your hands will warm up the dough when you're working with it and the extra step of chilling will help you get the best result.

Why? When cold butter is rubbed into the flour, it creates flaky pockets of flavour (which soft, room temperature butter can't do). Once the cold butter and liquid (e.g milk) hits the oven, the water in the butter and cold liquid begins evaporating.

The rich savoury flavour is a real treat and adds a great deal of depth to the usual teatime snack. Soup and a sandwich is a popular combination, so why not soup and a scone? Tomato soup works particularly well here, and it's a wholesome and filling lunchtime option that'll keep customers going until dinnertime.

How do British eat scones? ›

Scoop out clotted cream and jams onto your plate, enough for one scone. Break apart a small bite-sized portion of scone with your hands or if using a knife, cut the scone horizontally. Use a knife to slather on cream and jam onto the broken-off piece of scone. The bite-sized piece of scone should be eaten in 1-2 bites.

So when it comes to cream tea, what goes on your scones first? Cream or jam? Ask the Cornish, and they will tell you that the whole point of cream tea is to have freshly-baked (hopefully still warm) scones, with jam first and clotted cream on top. Ask a Devonian, and they'll tell you it's cream first and jam on top.

Additionally, using too much baking powder can give the finished product a bitter taste, as baking powder has a slight alkaline taste. It is important to follow the recipe carefully and use the correct amount of baking powder to ensure that your cakes and cookies turn out as desired.

Too much baking powder can cause the batter to be bitter tasting. It can also cause the batter to rise rapidly and then collapse. (i.e. The air bubbles in the batter grow too large and break causing the batter to fall.) Cakes will have a coarse, fragile crumb with a fallen center.

If we were to whip or steam the scones, they wouldn't retain their flakiness, and wouldn't rise as much as they would with baking powder. That leaves yeast. Yeast just needs some water and sugar to start producing carbon dioxide.

Yes, you can swap them in a recipe, but it's not as simple as switching buttermilk for heavy cream/heavy cream for buttermilk. For example, if you're replacing buttermilk with heavy cream you'll probably need to switch out your baking soda for baking powder.

Fat: Substituting heavy whipping cream for buttermilk will increase the fat content of the recipe, resulting in a richer and creamier texture.

The buttermilk can also add a slight sour tang to the scones, which many people like. If buttermilk is not available then you can use a 50-50 mixture of low fat plain (natural) yogurt and regular milk. It is also possible to sour milk by adding 1 tablespoon of lemon juice to each 250ml (1 cup) of whole milk.

Heavy Cream Has Higher Fat Content

Heavy cream contains “36% fat” on average, whereas the fat content of buttermilk is only 1%. Both products are thicker than standard milk, but the substantial fat in heavy cream also gives it “a slightly sweet flavor.”