Family Favorite scone recipe

I love a recipe that is versatile and flexible and works in a lot of different versions. I have made many versions of this scone recipe for many years now and they turn out great every time. It’s a flexible recipe that can be cut in half or doubled, and made in a variety of flavors and sizes.

One of our favorite family christmas breakfast treats are these scones make with a cranberry orange flavor. Something about that combination of flavors just feels festive to me.

My husband loves blueberry scones and I feel like the kind you buy are too often dry and crumbly, but I think the buttermilk in these keeps them flakey and moist and they make the best blueberry scones I’ve ever had.

And most recently I have been using this recipe to make a copycat version of the Starbucks Petite Vanilla Scones - my kids absolutely love those but it’s too expensive to buy very often. Trader Joe’s also sells a bag of little vanilla scones which are pretty good too. But neither of those are as good as these.

Scroll on down for the basic recipe, and be sure to read the notes where I tell you how to make some of our favorite variations. But even the plain version is amazing fresh out of the oven with a little butter or jam.

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Scones

Author: Lisa Marsh

Light and flakey scones with just the right amount of sweetness. This is an easy recipe to make ahead and to adapt for different flavors. Use this recipe to make copycat Starbucks Petit Vanilla Scones.

Ingredients

Dough Recipe

• 1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) cold butter (cut in small cubes)
• ­ 4 cups all purpose flour
• ­ 1⁄2 cup granulated or bakers sugar
• ­ 4 teaspoons baking powder
• ­ 1 teaspoon baking soda
• ­ 1 teaspoon salt (or 1/2 tsp if using salted butter)
• ­ 1 egg
• ­ 1 1⁄2 cups buttermilk
• ­ 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Optional icing and add-ins

• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 2-3 tablespoons whole milk
• Optional: extra buttermilk & sugar
• Optional: lemon juice, vanilla beans, lemon zest
• Optional: blueberries, dried cranberries, chocolate chips

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 425
2. ­ In a large bowl combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
3. ­ Add cubed butter and cut in and combine until mixture resembles fine crumbs.
4. ­ If using dried fruits, nuts, chocolate chips, vanilla beans: add to crumb mixture before adding wet ingredients.
5. ­ Combine buttermilk, egg, and vanilla.
6. ­ Add wet mixture to dry mixture and combine until it comes together into dough. Turn out dough onto a floured surface and knead several times until well mixed.
7. ­ Divide dough into quarters and press each quarter into a 1⁄2 inch thick circle.
8. ­ Cut each circle into 6 wedges.
9. ­ Alternatively, you can roll the entire dough out to 1⁄2 inch thick and cut in squares, or use a round biscuit cutter to cut circles.
10. ­ Place on parchment lined baking sheets. Brush with buttermilk and sprinkle with a little sugar. Skip this step if you plan to add icing.
11. ­ Bake for 12 – 15 minutes or until lightly golden brown.
12. ­ Allow to cool and then drizzle with icing if desired.
13. ­ You can make this dough ahead and refrigerate or freeze until ready to bake.

Notes

Starbucks copycat petit vanilla scones:

• divide the dough into 8 rounds instead of four.
• Bake for 10-12 minutes.
• Top with vanilla bean icing after cooling

Vanilla Bean Icing:

• Combine powdered sugar and milk until smooth.
• Scrape vanilla beans in and mix well

Blueberry scones:

• It works best if you use frozen blueberries and mix them right at the end and then work fast to get your scones rolled out before the blueberries thaw.

Lemon scones:

• Add the zest of one lemon to the dough
• Replace a tablespoon of buttermilk with lemon juice

Lemon icing:

• replace one tablespoon of milk in icing recipe with lemon juice.
• add the zest of one lemon to the icing.

Orange Cranberry Scones (our holiday breakfast favorite)

• Add orange zest and about a cup of dried cranberries to the dough

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Extra Creamy Scrambled Eggs

One of my favorite quick and easy tips for making amazing scrambled eggs every time: mayonnaise.

I said what I said. Add mayo. You know what mayo is made of right? It’s eggs and oil, with some seasoning, mixed into a creamy emulsion. So adding that to eggs makes them extra creamy and adds seasoning and flavor.

I usually do at least 6 - 12 eggs at a time because I’m always cooking for a crowd so I add a couple tablespoons of mayo. Experiment for yourself and decided how much you like.

Homemade superfood breakfast cereal

Do you need a boost of healthy energy in the morning?

A way to get your day going with a super healthy start? This is what I've been having for breakfast every day and I am loving it. 

This is my quick and easy recipe for a homemade superfood breakfast cereal. 

I was buying some pre-made superfood cereals, until I read the ingredients and realized it was all things I had in my pantry and I could throw it together myself for a LOT less than I was paying to buy it already made for me. 

As with most of what I make and share - this "recipe" is more of a guideline. This will give you a basic framework for a healthy cereal to get your morning off to a great start. 

You are basically just combining rolled oats with a variety of nuts, seeds, and dried fruits.

For mine I try to shop at Trader Joe's - they have a great selection of nuts, seeds, and dried fruits, and they have a good rice on organic oats. You could also grab your ingredients from the bulk foods section of your grocery store or natural market. 

Ingredients:

• Rolled oats: NOT steel cut, and not quick cooking. Just old fashioned rolled oats. 1 regular size container - probably about a pound. 

• Nuts: I like a combination of sliced almonds and chopped walnuts. Use any kind you like, just make sure they are in bite sized pieces.

• Seeds: Sunflower seeds, chia seeds, hemp seeds, flax seeds (or ground flax).

• Dried fruits: raisins, blueberries, cherries...

A few notes about the ingredients:

Nuts: Don't buy salted ones. They are going to be way too salty for this kind of recipe. I personally prefer to buy roasted nuts, I find that I digest them better. But if you like raw then go for raw nuts. I like to buy the nuts that are already sliced or chopped. That makes it super easy to throw this together.

Seeds: I buy roasted unsalted sunflower seeds - again, my system handles the roasted ones better. But many folks prefer raw. In addition to the sunflower seeds, add whatever combination of other seeds you can get your hands on - chia, hemp, flax - there's no limit!

Fruits: Trader Joe's has a great bag of mixed dried fruit, so that's what I've been using. It's got raisins, cranberries, blueberries, and cherries - so it's everything I need and it's easy. 

Feel free to add other stuff - ground flax is great, wheat germ if you're into that.

Quantities:

My personal preference is to have the mix be about half oats and half other stuff. Of the half "other stuff", I tend to go for about equal parts of fruit, nuts, and seeds - slightly more fruit & nuts vs. seeds. 

The container I'm using is about 8 cups. So that breaks down to about:

• 4 cups rolled oats

• 1 1/2 cups dried fruits

• 1 1/2 cups chopped nuts

• 1 cup mixed seeds

Instructions:

Literally - dump it all in and mix together. 

Store in an airtight container.

Serving:

My container comes with a 1 cup measuring scoop, so I use 1 cup as the serving. Add enough of your favorite milk to cover, and let sit for a few minutes to let the oats & fruit soften a bit. I use almond milk, but you can use any kind you like. 

I top it with whatever fresh fruit I've got around - blueberries, strawberries, etc. 

Yogurt Parfaits

I recently wrote about my super picky child, and how she is finally starting to try new foods, now that I have completely given up on pushing her.  But we are still in the baby steps phase with that, she certainly has a ways to go before she is eating everything the rest of us eat.  So for now, a very large part of her diet is still yogurt.  I'm thankful at least that she really loves something that is so healthy, and I can load it up with fruit and oats to really make it an even more complete meal for her.  

I make plain yogurt, or if I haven't had time, I buy it.  She likes her yogurt all dressed up with oats and honey and sometimes some jam or fruit.  I recently made lemon curd, so lately that has been her topping of choice, along with a little whipped cream.

It's a fantastic meal for her, but it can be a bit of a mess to get all these things out, so to save myself some time I decided to make her some yogurt parfait's in jam jars, so that she can help herself to one in the fridge whenever she needs a snack.  Or they are great for an easy week day breakfast.  

These are kind of like a combination of a flavored yogurt + an overnight oats idea.  

There's no real recipe here - that's the beauty of it.  You just take whatever you would normally put in yogurt or an overnight oats, and layer it.  Things like: 

• honey
• oats or granola (it will get soft)
• berries
• bananas
• jam
• cream
• dried fruit
• nuts or seeds

For this batch I layered plain yogurt, honey, oats, cream, lemon curd, and strawberries.  Just a little bit of each, and then repeat, until the jar is mostly full.  Its a good idea to leave a little room for stirring. 

Leftover jam jars seem to make the perfect size for a good serving, and I've got tons of them around.  But I'm sure you could get creative with other kinds of containers.  

Once you've layered everything, just put a lid on and put in the fridge.  I think they'll be good for several days, and it will probably very depending on whether you used fresh fruit. 

Enjoy!

Easy Sunday Breakfast

I love Sunday breakfast with the family.  It's a day of the week when we usually have no plans, we take our time, we relax, and we enjoy just doing our thing and hanging out.  It's also usually the one day of the week when I get to take the time to fix a real full breakfast for the whole family, and I enjoy it.

I usually make some kind of pancakes or waffles, along with either bacon or sausage, and maybe some scrambled eggs.  This Sunday I decided to freshen things up just a bit and experiment with a new egg dish.  And I'm so glad I did - this was easy to make, mostly hands off, and very satisfying.

I'm not exactly sure what to call it - a crustless quiche, or maybe a baked scrambled egg.  You could easily load this up with lots of extras, but I decided to keep it simple.

Ingredients: (which are approximate)

• 14 eggs (12 would have been fine, but I had 2 extra so I used them)
• 1/2 cup each of grated cheddar, jack, cottage, and parmesan cheese (any mixture of cheese will do)
• butter
• a splash of cream
• salt, pepper, garlic powder

Directions: 

I greased by baking dish with butter, and then coated that with most of the parmesan cheese.  Then I beat all the eggs very well until frothy, with the cream, and my seasonings, and then folded in the cheeses.  I poured the egg & cheese mixture in my dish, sprinkled the rest of the parmesan cheese on top.  Then baked at 350 for about 45 minutes until puffed and golden and set. 

So easy.

With the eggs we had some fried polish sausage, toast, strawberries and cantaloupe, and honey yogurt (plain yogurt that has been sweetened with honey) with lemon curd. The lemon curd is an amazing addition to the yogurt and/or on top of the fruit.  You can find my lemon curd recipe here. 

pineapple, orange & banana green smoothie

This is a bright and fresh tasting green smoothie to start off our day with a little extra energy.  I think half my kitchen freezer is full of frozen fruit.  Plenty of smoothie recipes call for fresh fruit, but I just like it better with frozen.  I buy extra bananas and just let them ripen on the counter, then break into pieces and freeze.  I also recently had a glut of oranges that we weren't going to get to, so I peeled and cut them into chunks and froze, and I've been using those in smoothies. 

I try to avoid using juice in my smoothies.  It just adds a lot of sugar without all the other nutrients from the fruit.  Instead I prefer to whole fruits and then add other liquid as needed.  In this one today I used my homemade almond milk. 

Ingredients are approximate.  This is a big smoothie - enough for me and four kids - so if you're just making it for yourself I would probably cut this down by at least half.  

• 1 cup frozen pineapple
• 2 frozen bananas
• 1 cup frozen orange chunks
• 1 cup plain yogurt
• 2 cups almond milk
• 3 kale leaves
• 3 tablespoons honey (or to taste)

Blend in a high speed blender until totally smooth.