Buttery, airy, slightly tart: Blackberry Lime Scones

Blackberries and lime juice and zest offer a nice tangy balance to these buttery, airy scones. Recipe below.

SO SCONES HAVE APPARENTLY BECOME A THING FOR ME. I like making them and we both love eating them, so I find myself looking for different kinds to make. Our daughter Claire and her boyfriend visited over Thanksgiving and—over our apple cheddar scones, appropriately enough—they mentioned some blackberry lime scones they can no longer get (the place has gone out of business, sadly). Let’s just say some synapses fired.

The pleasures of scone eating, for us, come from them not being quite a dessert, at least as we make them. Not too sweet and usually not iced, they’re a pleasantly rustic-looking pastry to have as a breakfast treat, an afternoon snack, or as I’ve said here before, something to be enjoyed leaning against the kitchen counter, smiling smugly and thinking, “I made this.”

Which segues nicely into the pleasures of scone making, at least for me. I’m not big on baking in general. It’s too exacting and unforgiving for me (and yes, I get that that’s probably just my misapprehension). But scones are bulletproof. The steps are straightforward, but there is enough of a process that I feel like I’m making something. And I know that the results will range from quite good to really wonderful. We freeze our scones before baking them, partly because they turn out better when we do and partly so we can bake them only as we need them. A side benefit of that is looking in the freezer and seeing a bag of scones waiting to be baked. Such a cozy, comforting feeling.

Blackberries and lime juice and zest offer a nice tangy balance to these buttery, airy scones. Most recipes call for glazing them with a lime and sugar glaze, making them tangier and sweeter. You can if you like, but we prefer them without.

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Blackberry Lime Scones

Blackberries and lime juice and zest offer a nice tangy balance to these buttery, airy scones.

Servings 8

Equipment

• parchment paper or silicone baking mat

Ingredients

• 6 tablespoons 3/4 stick cold unsalted butter
• 2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup cold half & half, plus more as needed (see Kitchen Notes)
• zest of 1 lime
• 1 large egg
• 1 cup fresh blackberries, halved (or frozen—see Kitchen Notes)
• 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice

Instructions

• Cut butter into 1/2-inch cubes: halve the stick lengthwise, rotate it 90º and slice lengthwise again, then slice crosswise into 1/2-inch pieces. Place in a bowl and pop in the freezer while you prepare the dry ingredients (you want the butter to stay as cold as possible until you're actually baking the scones).
• Combine flour, sugar, baking soda and salt in a food processor. Pulse several times to thoroughly mix everything. Beat egg and buttermilk together in a bowl. Set aside.
• Add cubed butter to dry ingredients in food processor and pulse until the mix resembles a coarse meal.
• Transfer flour mix to a mixing bowl. Work it with your hands to break up any remaining butter lumps, then stir in lime zest and blackberries with a wooden spoon. Pour egg/half & half mixture over everything and stir gently a bit to slightly combine. Add the lemon juice and gently stir to combine (adding it later reduces the chance of it curdling the half & half). If the dough happens to not be coming together, add a little more half & half a tablespoon at a time. But be cautious; the it can become quite sticky.
• With flour-dusted hands, transfer mix onto a lightly floured surface, preferably on a silicone baking mat. Working quickly, form it into a ball and flatten into an 8-inch disk, about 1 inch thick, slightly mounded in the center. Again, it can be sticky; dust your hands with more flour or even sprinkle a little over the dough as needed.
• Don’t skip this step. Place the dough disk on its silicone baking mat on a hotel pan and pop it in the freezer for 30 minutes. This will make the notoriously sticky dough much easier to cut into wedges and handle.
• Using a sharp knife, cut the now chilled and firm disk into 8 wedges.
• At this point, we highly recommend freezing the scones to bake later. This helps the end product stay more scone-shaped, not spreading out as the fresh dough can. Also, you can bake fewer scones at a time. There’s not suddenly two of you staring down eight scones. And if you wake up on a random Tuesday morning thinking a scone would start the day just right, you’re that much closer. Transfer the individual scones to a parchment- or silicone baking mat-lined hotel tray pan. Cover with waxed paper and freeze for at least two hours. Then store scones in zippered plastic bags; we do them in sets of two.
• Do not thaw scones to bake. Preheat oven to 400ºF and place scones on a lined baking sheet. Brush tops with a little half & half, and sprinkle with sugar, if desired. Bake until golden, 18 – 20 minutes, rotating sheet halfway through. Watch closely toward the end so they don’t brown too much.
• Transfer baked scones to a wire cooling rack and cool either slightly or completely, depending on your will power.
• You can also bake all or some of the scones right now. If you plan to do this, preheat the oven while the disk is still in the freezer and follow the baking instructions above, but check them at 16 minutes to be on the safe side.

Kitchen Notes

Half & half or cream or…? Most scone recipes call for cream, half & half, or milk. We like half & half and usually have it on hand, but use what you like. Some recipes even call for buttermilk, which we heartily endorse.

Blackberries, fresh or frozen? You can use either, but we like fresh. A 6-ounce package of fresh will give you more than enough for the recipe. Cut them in half so they aren’t these giant fruit lumps in the scones. If you use fresh, don’t thaw them, although halving them may be a bit of a challenge.

Liz’s Crockery Corner. This beautiful mid-19th century English plate appeared in another recipe here, Chicken with Leeks and Mushrooms. You can read Marion’s description of it here.