Easy Cinnamon Scones

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

These are drop scones, so you don’t need to use a biscuit cutter or cut the dough into wedges. Scones are supposed to look lumpy, bumpy and all a bit different. That’s a compliment. I use my cookie scoop to quickly portion out the dough.

You can make the dough in advance and store it in the fridge or freeze it to keep it longer. Also, there are multiple points in the recipe where you can hit the pause button and wait to bake. You can freeze scones baked or unbaked. Having these options makes it simple to have freshly baked scones.

Cinnamon is one of those ingredients that plays well with other flavors, so you can make additions. That includes nuts, orange zest or more dried spices. This recipe is wonderful as written, but you can tweak it to your taste.

What Are Scones?

Similar in ingredients and in how you make the dough to American biscuits, scones are originally from Scotland. They are often served with afternoon tea in Great Britain. They have a definite crust on the outside, but they are light and fluffy inside. When you split one in half, you should see flaky layers, and they will be kind of crumbly.

They are not overly sweet like other baked goods. In this cinnamon scones recipe, I sweeten them with sugar and a touch of maple syrup. I love that subtle maple flavor with cinnamon. Besides tea, you can also enjoy scones with coffee for breakfast or brunch.

The Ingredients

This is what you need:

• Flour: Basic all-purpose flour gives scones their tender layered crumb.
• Butter: The recipe calls for chilled and firm unsalted butter. Unlike cookies and other baked goods where you cream soft butter with sugar, for scones you cut or rub the butter into the dry ingredients. It won’t work unless you have cold butter.
• Granulated sugar sweetens the scones. It’s mixed into the dry ingredients.
• Cinnamon is in the sugar topping as well as in the dry ingredients for the dough.
• Maple syrup: As mentioned, I include 2 tablespoons of maple syrup for sweetness and its distinct flavor. Of course, use pure maple syrup.
• Baking powder helps the scones rise.
• Salt, in a small amount, brings out the overall flavors even in baking.
• Egg: The recipe calls for 1 egg whisked with the wet ingredients.
• Milk: Some scone recipes require heavy cream, which is not something that I usually have in my fridge. That’s why I use milk, and it can be any type from skim to reduced fat milk to oat milk.
• Pure vanilla extract rounds all the flavors in these scones.   

Optional Additions

You can mix any of the following into the dry ingredients:

• Cinnamon chips: These are basically the cinnamon version of chocolate chips. They are crunchy and sweet. 
• Chopped pecans or walnuts are both nuts that go very well with cinnamon.
• Orange zest adds citrus freshness. 
• Chai spices: By including ground ginger, cardamom, nutmeg and cloves with the cinnamon to turn these into chai-spiced scones.

How To Make Cinnamon Scones

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

1. Combine the dry ingredients in a big bowl, including flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking soda and salt.

2. Cut the butter into the flour mixture. You can use a pastry blender (also known as a pastry cutter) to push the cold butter cubes into the flour. When you do this, you should end up with pea-sized clumps or coarse crumbs mixed throughout the dry ingredients. Those butter clumps in the dough release steam as the scones bake helping them rise and giving them their layered crumb.

3. Whisk together the wet ingredients in another bowl. That includes the egg, milk, maple syrup and vanilla extract.

4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. You can use a big spoon or a fork to stir them into a shaggy dough. Then it’s easiest to take your hands and press the dough into a ball. If your bowl is big enough, you won’t need to turn out the dough onto a lightly floured work surface. You can keep it all in the bowl and have less cleanup.

5. Make the cinnamon sugar mixture by combining the cinnamon and granulated sugar in a small bowl.

6. Portion out the dough onto the baking sheets. You can do this with your hands or a cookie scoop. The balls of dough should be a generous 1/4-cup-full. Brush the tops of the scones with milk and sprinkle them with cinnamon sugar.

7. Bake the scones until they are golden brown and cracked on the top, about 18-20 minutes. Then let them cool on a wire rack.

Serving

You can enjoy scones warm or at room temperature. It’s best to give them a little time to cool off rather than eating them hot from the oven. That’s because the outside will get that good crust and crunch as it cools.

Storage & Freezing

Scones are best the day you bake them. To freeze the dough unbaked, portion it out onto a sheet pan lined with parchment paper or waxed paper. Then freeze them. Once they are solid and frozen, you can put the scones in the same container. Then you can bake them whenever you want. I bake one every morning.

If you have leftover baked scones, you can store them in an airtight container at room temperature up to 2 days. To revive them, bake them in a 300-degree F oven for 5 minutes.

If you freeze baked scones, you can thaw them in a 325-degree F oven for 12-14 minutes.