Bouchon Bakery Challenge: Scones

Scones! This month for my Bouchon Bakery Challenge I tried two of the scone recipes from Bouchon Bakery. I was gong to make only the Plain Scones, but my sister insisted that I try the Cinnamon Honey Scones too. Since the Cinnamon Honey Scones recipe makes use of the Plain Scones dough, I decided to use half the dough for the plain ones and the other half for the cinnamon honey.

It’s hard to go wrong with all the good stuff packed into these scones: butter, heavy cream, and crème fraîche. Cake flour is used for a tender crumb.

Cinnamon Honey Scone

These are excellent scones. The texture is perfect: slightly crunchy and short on the outside and tender on the inside. They are very flavorful without being too sweet. The Cinnamon Honey Scones are wonderful on their own, while the Plain Scones are the perfect foundation for butter and a special jam. The cookbook mentions that the Plain Scones would make a great base for shortcakes, and I agree.

Plain Scone with Meyer Lemon & Lavender Marmalade

A great thing about these recipes is that shaped scones are meant to be frozen overnight before baking.  This provides so much flexibility!  Having a big celebration?  Get the scones made a few days early and pop them in on the big day.  Having a small celebration, or baking scones “just because”?  Just bake what you need and save the rest for later.

Recipe Notes

• The Plain Scone recipe is ready-made to be tinkered with. Try adding nuts or dried fruits, flavorings, or use your imagination. I am thinking of trying to reproduce the petite vanilla scones they have at Starbucks or doing something with my leftover rose extract.

• The recipes give instructions for baking these in both convection or standard ovens.  A comment suggests they will have a slightly higher rise in a convection oven.  Since my oven has a convection feature that I don’t use very often I gave it a try.  My scones turned out slightly sunken in and the interior was a little dense, almost like they weren’t cooked all the way through (but they still tasted good!).  In a bolt of inspiration (after I took most of my photos) I decided to try baking some of them using the “standard” instructions and they turned out much better.  Fully risen and cooked through.

You can really see the sunken look in this photo:

Sunken Scone

This scone was baked in a standard oven.  See how it’s nicely rounded at the top?

Cinnamon Honey Scone baked in a “standard” oven.

Altitude Adjustments

None. I generally don’t need to make adjustments for scones and biscuits, especially those recipes without eggs. I was slightly “ungenerous” when measuring the baking powder and baking soda, but that’s it.

I do think that my troubles baking these in convection mode is somehow related to altitude. The issues are similar to high altitude issues: the “fallen” look and dense interior. Perhaps the temperature was too low to support the rising dough? One of the recommendations for combating fallen cakes is to raise the oven temperature a bit, which causes the batter to “set” before the cells expand too much and collapse. Just some rambling thoughts…

Next Month

For June I will be making the Doughnuts (page 196) with my sister while I am visiting family in Seattle. I will share my results with you on June 25th (my birthday!).