Cranberry Orange Scone Recipe - Mess for Less (2024)

FAQs

What happens if you put too much sugar in scones? ›

Why are my scones flat and crumbly? It's possible you added too much sugar. Sugar makes scones crumbly. You could have baked them for too long or used a high temperature, which caused them to flatten.

Adding the milk all at once

The quantity and order in which you add ingredients to your scone dough will alter its texture and consistency. If you add too much liquid, it will come out wet and not hold its shape.

Bring the dough together

Using a bowl scraper or spatula, quickly but gently fold everything into a cohesive mass (with perhaps a few floury/dry spots). Avoid over-handling, which makes tough scones.

Try placing your scones closer together on the tray as this forces them to rise upwards and not outwards.

To ensure taller scones, start with a thicker dough disc and place the scones on a tray with sides, allowing them to slightly touch one another. This arrangement encourages the scones to push against the pan and each other, promoting height.

Avoid using a food processor to mix scones: A food processor will work, but it often overworks the scone dough. We recommend using your hands until the mixture comes together. Overworking the dough will lead to scones that are tough and chewy, rather than light and flaky.

My scones have a dense, heavy texture and poor volume

You may have used too little raising agent or over handled the dough before it was baked. The oven may have been too cool.

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.

How thick should scones be before baking? ›

It is far better that the scone mixture is on the wet side, sticking to your fingers, as the scones will rise better. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and flatten it out with your hand, or use a rolling pin, to a thickness of 1-2 cm (1/2 – ¾ inch).

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.

Normally scones are baked in a pre-heated oven, usually for about 20 minutes at about 350 degrees F.

Butter must be COLD from the very start to when the dough enters the oven. The cold butter melts upon entering the oven and the water content in butter evaporates in steam. As the steam escapes, it bursts up and creates that beautiful tall, flaky, fluffy texture.

Sugar creates tenderness in baked goods by weakening the gluten structure (proteins in flour). Adding too much sugar can weaken the gluten structure in a cake to the point that it may collapse.

If your dish is a little too sweet, try rounding out the sweetness by adding flavors or ingredients that are sour, bitter, or spicy. It may be obvious not to add more sweet ingredients, but you should also stay away from salty ones since they actually bring out the sweetness in food.

However, if too much sugar is added (these simple vanilla cupcakes had twice as much as they should have), then not only do they rise to the extreme but the structure takes so long to set (these were baked for 15 minutes longer than a normal batch) that they then collapse dramatically towards the end of baking.

You can add a couple TBSP extra of flour and another TBSP water to try and balance the ingredients.