The apple is cooked twice: once in the pan with cinnamon and golden sugar until it collapses, then again in the oven inside the dough. Rubbing cold butter into the flour until it looks like coarse sand is what gives the scone its short crumb, and the thirty minutes in the freezer before cutting keeps the wedges from slumping.
British · Breakfast
Apple Cinnamon Scones With a Buttery Folded Crumb
Stewed apple dice get folded into a cold butter scone dough three times over, then the round chills before cutting so the wedges hold their shape at 180 C.
- Prep45 min
- Cook22 min
- Serves6
- LevelEasy
Ingredients
| 1 | apple , peeled and diced |
| 8 g | ground cinnamon |
| 20 g | golden caster sugar |
| 160 g | cake flour |
| 4 g | baking powder |
| 10 g | caster sugar |
| 40 g | beaten egg |
| 40 g | butter , cold |
| 50 ml | milk |
| a little | egg yolk , for brushing |
| to finish | icing sugar , optional |
Method
- Peel and dice the apple, put it in a pan with the golden caster sugar and the cinnamon, and cook over medium heat until the pieces soften and lose their raw edge.
- Put the cake flour, baking powder and caster sugar in a bowl, add the cold butter and rub it in with your fingertips until the mixture looks like coarse sand.
- Pour in the beaten egg and the milk and bring everything together into a dough; stop as soon as it holds, before it turns smooth.
- Flatten the dough into a disc, scatter over a third of the apple, then fold and press it three times, adding apple at each fold, and shape the lot into a round.
- Chill the round in the freezer for 30 minutes, then cut it into wedges.
- Brush the tops with egg yolk and press the leftover apple dice onto the surface.
- Bake at 180 C for about 22 minutes, until the edges are set and golden, then dust with icing sugar once cool.
Notes
- Keep the butter cold and handle the dough as little as possible; warm butter gives a tight, bready crumb instead of a flaky one.
- The freezer step is not optional if you want clean wedges. Cutting soft dough smears the layers and the scones spread in the oven.
Ratios and technique checked against 桃子很2 on Douguo (免揉面发面❗️苹果肉桂司康). The method here is written by Stellaok; the photograph is the source kitchen's, credited on the image above and linked back to the page it came from. No recipe text is reproduced.