The Baking Bible: Flaky Cream Cheese Scones

I've got one photo of these delicious cream cheese scones, and here it is. I've made only a few scones in my life but these are the best ever. They really are tender and flaky and buttery and simply delicious.

I used dried sour cherries (cut in half) instead of dried blueberries and omitted the lemon zest (because I forgot to buy a lemon). I wasn't too sure if I would like lemon zest with sour cherries and was planning on adding some vanilla extract but I forgot that too. So just sour cherries, and no complaints here.

These scones are unusual in their construction as cream cheese is blended into the flour as well as butter. Then a bunch of whipped cream and honey are mixed in and the dough is lightly kneaded. I did like the technique of pressing the dough out in a 9 inch cake plate to make sure the edges are even and smooth and the disc fairly even. After a slight chill the dough is divided into 8 slices and are baked until golden brown. The recipe says use a sharp knife and I used my bench scraper, which has a kind of sharp edge. It worked.

Mark and I are a little sad this recipe makes only eight scones. I also think, as the lazy person that I am, that maybe this is a bit too many steps for just eight scones. Clearly I think a scone recipe either needs to be one bowl and take ten minutes to make or I need a multi step scone recipe to yield a thousand scones. I may need to adjust my expectations. In the meantime, I will enjoy my last scone.