Maple Walnut Scones

I've always been a huge scone fan. In high school, I was firmly in the iced lemon poppy seed scone or bust camp, but my taste buds have matured a little bit since then. I haven't met a single scone recipe in any of the Baked cookbooks that I haven't liked, although some have worked out a little better than others. These maple walnut scones are our second scone recipe from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking (and the only other scone recipe in the book). They're also the first Baked scone I've decided to modify slightly....

It might be obvious, either from things I've said or from the actual content on this blog, but I can't stand chunks of nuts in my baked goods. This applies not only to the obvious (brownies with surprise nuts make me sad), but also to breakfast-y things like these maple walnut scones. My dislike of chunks of nuts interrupting my tender pastry isn't something I've ever felt I needed to "overcome", instead I just work around it.

I tried these scones two ways.

First, I simply omitted the walnuts completely. To give the scones more character, I replaced 25% (1 cup) of the all-purpose flour with 1 cup of teff flour, in the hopes that the teff flavor would contribute to a nutty, complex flavor in the baked maple scones. In addition to my alteration of flour, I also used 95 grams (a scant ½ cup) of maple sugar instead of granulated sugar and maple syrup in place of the maple extract. I don't have any maple extract and after an experience with root beer extract being a little too overwhelming in my poor root beer float cookies, I haven't been motivated to expand my extract collection beyond what is already there. Unlike some other experiences I've had with Baked scones, I didn't need much extra liquid to get the dough to come together. I added ¾ cup + 2 tablespoons whole buttermilk, but realized I probably didn't need those extra 2 tablespoons, as my dough came together really easily. I portioned the dough into about 9-10 3-inch rounds. (Caleb has strong opinions about triangular scones and since it's taken me so long to get him to eat scones, I'm happy to make round ones for him.)

The baking time for these was pretty spot on. I found 26 minutes in the 350 oven to be the perfect doneness for me; the maple teff scones were golden brown along the edges but still tender in the middle. These pictures are a little deceptive, as I made the first batch at a friends and didn't have the baking temperature with me, so I baked them at 375 for 20 minutes, which caused the bottoms to flatten out a little more in the oven than they did the second time around, cooked at the proper temperature.

With the substitution of the maple sugar for the granulated sugar and the maple syrup for the maple extract, these scones had a very subtle maple flavor. Everyone did really like them, but several people liked them even more after covering them with a healthy amount of the maple icing.

The second time I made these, I ground a cup of walnuts into a coarse flour in my food processor, then used that to replace one cup of all-purpose flour in the maple walnut scones. So while I didn't have chunks of nuts in these, I did get the true walnut flavor into the scone dough. For these second batch, I was out of maple sugar, so I used 80 grams of granulated sugar plus 3 tablespoons of maple syrup instead of the full ½ cup of granulated sugar plus the maple extract. Otherwise, basically everything else was the same. I used only ¾ cup of whole buttermilk and that was plenty of hydration for the scone dough (possibly because I was lazy and made it in a food processor). Either because I was lazy and messed up the proper butter chunk striations in the dough, or because of the ground up nuts, these maple walnut scones were much less flaky than the maple teff scones had been. Instead, they were rather crumbly, but still, incredibly tender and slightly more maple flavored (in a good way).

I am trying to overlook the vast quantity of butter in these scones, because butter makes scones the tender flaky breakfast pastries they are. Three whole sticks are a little hard to overlook, but I've certainly made things with a higher butter ratio before (croissants being the first example). I really enjoyed these (as did Caleb and the friends we shared them with). I'd certainly make them again; they are really easy to make, easily modifiable to suit your preferences, not overly sweet, but nicely maple-y.

Head to Baked Sunday Mornings for the recipe to make these yourself and to see what the other bakers thought of these maple walnut scones.