Maple Oat Scones

I love having a scone in the morning with a chai tea latte from Starbucks. When I lived in Southern California, there was a Starbucks less than a block away from my house. I sure do miss that... It's at least a 10 minute drive to the nearest Starbucks from our house in Oklahoma. It's still worth the drive. Whether you enjoy your scone with your favorite drink from Starbucks or your homemade coffee or tea, enjoy it for breakfast soon.

    

Maple Oat Scones

For the scones…
3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup quick-cooking oats, plus additional for sprinkling if desired
2 tablespoons baking powder
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1 pound (4 sticks) cold butter, cut into small pieces
1/2 cup cold buttermilk
1/2 cup pure maple syrup (or 1/2 cup maple syrup + 1 teaspoon maple extract)
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1 egg, lightly beaten with 1 tablespoon milk or water (for egg wash)

For the glaze…
1 1/4 cups powdered sugar
1 tablespoon cup maple syrup
2 teaspoons maple extract (or vanilla extract if you don’t have maple)
1 to 2 teaspoons water (to thin as needed) 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Using an electric mixer (stand mixer works best, but a hand mixer will work too) in a large bowl, combine the flours, oats, baking powder, sugar, and salt. Now add the massive amount of cold butter!

Mix in the butter at the lowest speed until the butter and dry ingredients are in pea sized pieces (it should look like this picture).

In a small bowl, combine the buttermilk, maple syrup, and 4 eggs. Add the liquid mixture to the flour/butter mixture all at once. Mix on low speed until just combined. Do not over mix! The mixture will be quite sticky.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface. The recipe in the Barefoot Contessa Cookbook says to use a floured rolling pin to roll the dough, but I found it much easier and effective to just flour my hands and use them to flatten the dough to an even thickness – about 3/4- to 1-inch thick.

Use a round cookie cutter or biscuit cutter (I actually used a round flower cookie cutter) to cut into 3-inch rounds. Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

Brush the tops of the scones with egg wash. Bake for 20 minutes or until the tops or crisp and golden brown.

To make the glaze, combine all ingredients in a small bowl. Add water one teaspoon at a time if needed to thin a little. When the scones have cooled, use a knife or small spatula to spread each scone with about 1 tablespoon of glaze. Sprinkle a little oatmeal on top if you like.

 

Enjoy!

TIP: This recipe makes a huge amount of scones. You can half the recipe or you can make the whole thing and just divide some to save for baking later. You can store them in a sealed container (I just used some parchment paper between the uncooked scones and placed them in a ziplock bag). You can refrigerate them uncooked for a few days or in the freezer for a couple of weeks. Just remove from freezer/refrigerator, place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper as described above.

recipe from Ina Garten's The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook