I recently made the dire mistake of going to the store hungry with no time constraints. I wandered into Sprouts and took my time browsing their produce and snacks and everything in-between. I brought home some new stuff to try with no plans for any of it. Most notably, I bought dried tart cherries. While I expected a nice raisin like snack, I got a very tart hardly bearable food item instead and I really should’ve known better. So I took to the Internet to find something to bake these into and I stumbled upon a recipe for Perfect almond and cherry scones with orange glaze by peanutbutterandjulie. I was immediately hooked and got to baking.
This recipe pairs tart cherries, almond, and orange together which sounds like a lot of flavors. I’m not really sure how well they’ll balance each other out or if they will fight each other for flavor dominance. The recipe is relatively easy sounding and doesn’t even require a chill step. You start by combining your flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar with your cold cubed butter. Then using your hands you keep squishing the butter until you have pea sized bits of butter. This is messy and kinda fun. You get to stick your hands in flour and squeeze butter around, it reminds me of playdough if you combined it with kinetic sand.
Next you add your orange zest, heavy cream, almond extract, vanilla extract, and cherries. Mix it until just combined so you don’t incorporate the butter because you want those tiny bits to stick around. The dough wasn’t very sweet to taste and had a slight hint of almond and orange. Next, transfer the dough to a floured surface and split it into two portions. Flatten those into portions into 3/4inch thick disk and then cut each disk into 8 triangles which gives you 16 scones.
Once you place those triangles on the sheet pan, you need to egg wash them. The recipe says to combine an egg and a tablespoon of cream which I found interesting because I’ve never added cream to an egg wash, only water. I only used up about half the egg wash on the scones. Then the pan went into the oven at 400° and the recipe claimed it would take 16-24 minutes. I found at 17 minutes my scones had baked and browned beautifully. I really appreciate that online recipes tend to be accurate with their bake times, unlike box mixes.
While the scones cooled I made a glaze which was just powdered sugar and the juice from the orange I previously zested. The glaze step also calls for sliced almonds, toasted. I only had slivered almonds so I used those and I placed them in the 400° oven after the scones for about 5 minutes and they were nice and toasty.
I drizzled the glaze on the scones and sprinkled a couple almonds on top. The recipe called for 3/4 cup of almonds and I toasted the full amount and then found I only used maybe a little over 1/4 cup of the almonds. Now I have to find something to make with the remaining toasted almonds. It’s an endless cycle of baking in my house.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from these scones but they were amazing. The outside had a nice crispness to it and the inside was perfectly soft. The flavors paired together so well. Each one had its moment and nothing was too strong or too subtle. The glaze on top added the perfect sweetness to the scone. For the almonds on top, I could take them or leave them. I didn’t really feel like they added anything flavor wise or texture wise but they made the scones look better so maybe I’d add them again. These are the perfect summer treat and if you’re in the mood for scones, I highly recommend this recipe.
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