For the longest time I was very intimidated by scones. I'm not sure why I thought making them would be the most difficult thing in the world but I did. Last year I finally conquered my fear and made these carrot cake scones with cream cheese frosting. They were good. They were really good actually but scones aren't exactly the healthiest dessert choice. I decided to make it my mission to come up with a recipe for something that seemed indulgent but wasn't going to put people into a food coma after eating one. This past Friday we had a food day at work and what better chance to test out a new recipe than on my coworkers. This recipe makes 16 scones and after bringing these into work I was left with nothing...absolutely nothing, not even one single crumb in my container to take home. I'll take that as a compliment even though I didn't get to save an extra one for myself...
Yield: 16 scones • Serving size: 1 scone
Calories: 150 • Total Fat: 5g • Total Carbs: 24g • Fiber: 1.75g • Sugar: 11.5g • Protein: 3.5g
- 3/4 cup skim milk
- 3/4 tbsp vinegar
- 1 tsp red food coloring
- 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
- 1 large egg
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1 cup white whole wheat flour
- 3 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 3 tbsp chilled unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
- 3/4 cup mini chocolate chips
- Cooking spray
- 1 egg white
- 1 tsp granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar
- 1 tbsp milk (I prefer almond or cashew milk)
Preheat oven to 375°. In a glass measuring cup, add milk and vinegar and whisk until just combined. Allow mixture to sit for 5-10 minutes to thicken (this is will end up being your "homemade buttermilk"). Once the mixture has thickened, add food coloring then vanilla and egg and whisk until combined.
In a large bowl, combine the two flours, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt; whisk together. Cut in chilled, cubed, butter with a pastry blender until mixture looks like tiny pebbles. If you do not have a pastry blender you can use your hands but don't spend too much time mixing, you want the butter to stay cold. Add chocolate chips to flour mixture and mix so the chocolate chips are coated in the flour (adding the chocolate chips to the dry ingredients prevents the chocolate chips from sinking to the bottom of the dough).
Dump dough onto a floured surface and form into two disks so that each is about 1/2" tall and 6" across. The dough will be sticky so make sure you have enough flour on hand to add to it if necessary. Using a knife or pastry cutter, cut each disk into 8 pieces.
Place scones about 1" apart on a cookie sheet lined with a Silpat or sprayed with cooking spray. Brush tops of scones with egg white then sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 15-17 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool on cookie sheet for 5 minutes then transfer to a cooling rack. While scones are cooling, make the frosting: in a small bowl mix the powdered sugar and milk until the frosting is just thin enough to drizzle (if it is too thick, add more milk 1/8 tsp at a time). Using a spoon, drizzle over cooled scones and allow frosting to harden. Serve.
Recipe heavily adapted from: Skinnytaste
