December 3, 2020

Cinnamon Maple Scones

Drop scones like these cinnamon maple scones are very easy to make. The ingredients come together quickly, and they bake to beautiful golden brown.

Cumin and cinnamon are the spices I have trouble keeping stocked in my kitchen.

I like to keep a small seasonings supply of just what I use in my regular cooking and baking.

We all have been guilty of letting jars of spices linger in our pantry far beyond their recommended use-by date.

Whoever is responsible with inventing the bulk section at the grocery is my hero. I only have a short list of spices that I will buy in a jar.

The rest I prefer to purchase by the scoop.

Then none will go to waste.

Cinnamon always makes the cut. So many things can use a sprinkle of it.

From bircher muesli to apple muffins to even a savory Moroccan tagine, cinnamon is a magical ingredient.

My seven-year-old feels the same way. It is pretty much a guarantee he will like something if it has cinnamon on the ingredient list.

And I can’t quite put into words how much he loves these cinnamon maple scones.

I think of a scone as being pretty filling, but over the course of a morning, he can easily eat two of them.

He starts with one for breakfast and a little later has one for a mid-morning snack.

We have a ritual with these scones. My husband and I wait to have ours with coffee, while our son has one with a side of cinnamon cereal. You can never have too much cinnamon, right?

The good thing is that they are very easy to bake.

In the past I have rolled out scones and used a biscuit cutter to cut them out into rounds. Now I go with the drop method.

They all turn out kind of different shapes, but I think their ragged tops and edges make them look even more charming.

How To Make Cinnamon Maple Scones

First, I preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Then in a large bowl I combine all-purpose, baking powder, granulated sugar, cinnamon and salt.

I use a fork to cut the butter into the dry ingredients. The result is a bunch of pea-sized clumps of butter in the flour mixture.

After that I whisk together the wet ingredients: an egg, milk, maple syrup and vanilla extract. Then I stir that into the flour.

Even though the scones have both sugar and maple syrup, they are not overly sweet. The maple is subtle.

When the dough starts to come together, it’s a bit shaggy, so I press it together with my hands.

Then I scoop the dough by the 1/4-cup-full, spacing it 3 inches apart on two parchment paper-lined sheet pans.

Finally, I brush the scones with milk and generously sprinkle each one with cinnamon sugar.

They bake to a beautiful golden brown in 18-20 minutes.

Thank goodness these cinnamon maple scones are so easy to make because they never last long enough at our house.

When the last one has been devoured, I always start thinking about baking the next batch.