Earl Grey Scones

Disclaimer: this post may contain affiliate links, which means if you decide to purchase any of the items linked in this post, I should earn a small commission. This creates no additional cost to you and helps support the work that goes into running The Fig Jar. Thank you! -Becky

• Dry ingredients: all-purpose flour, salt, baking powder, granulated sugar, earl grey tea

• Wet ingredients: unsalted butter, sour cream, eggs, milk

• Powdered sugar

• Milk

• Vanilla bean paste (affiliate link)

You don’t have to use vanilla bean paste but it is a very nice addition. You get vanilla flavor (which goes perfectly with earl grey) and real vanilla bean all throughout. It’s fine to sub in a splash of vanilla extract if you want.

I topped mine with edible flowers but this is very optional and doesn’t affect taste. These are the flowers I bought.

Let’s face it, scones can sometimes be a bit unimpressive, they can be a bit dry or lack sweetness, etc. But when done right, scones can be an absolute delight to all. I think what makes a good scone is:

• Tender dough
• A good rise
• Great flavor

A dry, tough baked good of any kind is never enjoyable. Though scones are on the dryer side of the baked good spectrum and they aren’t supposed to be like a doughnut or a piece of cake, a scone should still have a lightness and tenderness to it. My earl grey scone recipe calls for sour cream which is the secret to extra tender scones. Of course, butter also tenderizes the dough.

Who likes flat scones? Yeah, I didn’t think so. A good rise is crucial to preventing a flat, too-dense scone. So…

Baking powder of course is a typical leavening agent and is called for in all of my scone recipes on this site. Baking powder reacts with other ingredients in the scone dough to create gas (carbon dioxide), this reaction makes the scone puff up.

And my third requisite for a good scone: flavor! Which should be a no-brainer I guess. I love adding mixins to scones. There’s just so many options- Cranberry, Kumquats, tea, chocolate, espresso powder… There are so many possible mix-in/icing flavor combos out there it’s hard for me to think about making a plain scone. BUT, you certainly can. Just make sure you use high-quality butter that doesn’t have any fridge funk or that will be all you taste. I mean, you really want to do this no matter if you are using mix-ins or not right?…

Start by combining the dry ingredients in a large bowl and adding butter. Use a pastry blender (affiliate link) to cut in the butter until pea-sized lumps form (photo #1 below).

Then add in the wet ingredients and stir until a very shaggy dough begins to form (photo #2 below). Turn this out onto a floured work surface and knead until the dough comes together.

Once the dough comes together (you shouldn’t need to knead more than 10 times), shape into a circle, cut into eight pieces and place on a parchment lined baking sheet (photo #3 below).

Bake at 400F for 12-15 minutes, until they begin to brown. Let them cool fully before icing them.

To ice the scones, you can either dip them straight into the icing, spread it on with a spoon or drizzle it. I went with the dipping method for this recipe 🙂

If you try this recipe, please consider leaving a comment/rating below and let me know how it went. I’d love to hear from you! You can also connect with me on instagram and Pinterest.

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Roasted Kumquat Scones