Gingerbread Scones - Joyofbaking.com *Video Recipe* (2024)

FAQs

Is biscuit dough the same as scone dough? ›

What's the Main Difference? The biscuit and scone share British heritage, quick bread status, and the basic foundation of flour, fat, and liquid. But as they evolved to what they are today, scone recipes use eggs, and biscuit recipes do not.

It's important to note that premade self-raising flours can vary in quality and potency based on brand and age, as leavening agents can lose their effectiveness over time. For instance, baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) forms carbon dioxide gas when heated, which helps baked goods rise.

Using cold ingredients helps, but your hands can warm up the dough when you're working with it. For extra precaution, it helps to chill the dough again before it's baked. Follow this tip: Cut the scone dough into wedges, place them on a baking sheet, and keep them in the fridge while the oven preheats.

Victoria scones are also sometimes called empire scones and are a cake baked to celebrate Queen Victoria's coronation and Jubilee. The scone is shaped into a round with a cross cut across the top. A glace cherry is placed in the center of each segment. To represent the jewels in her crown.

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.

American scones use much more butter than British scones, and they usually have quite a bit more sugar. The extra butter is what makes them so much denser. This is not really a good or bad thing, as British scones pile on plenty of sugar (in the form of preserves/jam) and butter or clotted cream as toppings.

The secret is using cake flour instead of all-purpose flour. It's lower in protein and makes for ultra-tender scones. If you don't have any on hand, you can easily make your own using all-purpose flour and cornstarch (see the FAQs below).

The two come in combination as bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) is an alkaline and needs the addition of an acid, such as cream of tartar, to create the carbon dioxide that causes the scones to rise. The amount of cream of tartar - 4 1/2 teaspoons - is correct.

I didn't use baking powder in the scones I made yesterday and they were light and fluffy but I did use self raising flour. If you used plain flour they might be a bit biscuity! They'll still taste good but might be thin.

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.

Should I refrigerate scone dough before baking? ›

This short rest relaxes the gluten, making scones more tender; and cold chills the fat, increasing flakiness. Make scone dough up to three days ahead. Shape into 3/4"-thick disks, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate until ready to cut and bake.

Keep scone dough as cold as possible. To avoid over-spreading, I recommend chilling the shaped scones for at least 15 minutes in the refrigerator before baking. In fact, you can even refrigerate overnight for a quick breakfast in the morning! Bake until golden brown.

In Devon, the scones are split in two and topped with cream followed by jam. In Cornwall, the split scones are topped with jam and then cream. While it doesn't necessarily affect the flavor of the cream tea, it's simply the order of the ingredients that are different.

Irish scones are close relatives to English scones. They are made with a simple combination of flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, butter, and milk. Dried currants or raisins are a common addition and sometimes an egg is added to the dough to enrich it.

The Devon Way of serving Cream Tea is to split the scone in half, spread clotted cream on each half, and then add a dollop of jam on top. The Cornish Way, on the other hand, is to split the scone in half, spread jam on each half, and then add a dollop of clotted cream on top.

"Scones are typically made using a quick bread method with a higher ratio of liquid to flour, and sometimes no butter at all," says Snyder. In contrast, biscuits have a high ratio of butter, and the lamination process needed to achieve flaky layers is a key differentiator to scones.

“Scones are made with cream and eggs,” said Katina Talley, owner of Sweet Magnolias Bake Shop in Omaha, Nebraska. “They're sweeter, drier, and may contain fruit. Biscuits are typically made with buttermilk and no eggs. They're flaky, soft, and traditionally not sweet.”

Soft dough biscuits as the name suggests are softer and fluffier than their hard dough counterparts. They have higher levels of fat & sweetness and are generally manufactured with the help of a rotary moulding machine.

A Biscuit (U.S.) Is a Scone (U.K.)

Both baked goodies use flour, fat, liquid and a leavening agent. The main differences are that scones tend to have less butter (because you'll add butter to it when you eating it — or else, clotted cream or jam) while American biscuits tend to have more butter and light layers.