Blackberry Scones

Next up in the blackberry baking adventures came some blackberry scones. I wasn’t quite sure how these would turn out, since there aren’t a plethora of blackberry scone recipes out there, the way there are for say, cranberry scones. I thought that perhaps there is a reason for that – maybe the blackberries are just too juicy to work in a scone. When I mixed the dough, it came out SO thick and SO heavy that I realized there was just no possible way that I was ever going to be able to stretch the dough out and cut it into circles. I’m not sure what exactly went wrong – maybe the blackberries were just too much – but boy oh boy was it dense. Rather than just give up, I decided to just squash all the dough into my springform pan and pop it in the oven and see what happened. Lo and behold, after baking for quite a while – scones! These were especially tasty with the blackberry jam that already happened to be be leftover in the lab from a previous scone smorgasbord brought in by our PI!

Blackberry Scones
adapted from America’s Test Kitchen

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 3 tablespoons sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 5 tablespoons chilled, unsalted butter, cut into 1/4 inch cubes
• 3/4 cups blackberries
• 1 cup heavy cream

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425F.
2. Add flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse six times. Distribute butter over dry ingredients. Cover and pulse 12 times, each pulse lasting 1 second. Add blackberries and pulse one more time.
3. Transfer dough to a large bowl and stir in cream with a rubber spatula until dough begins to form, about 30 seconds.
4. Transfer dough to countertop and knead by hand until it just comes together in a rough, sticky ball.
5. Press dough into a 9-inch springform pan, scoring the dough into 8 wedges with a knife.
6. Bake dough in springform pan until tops are light brown and dough is cooked through, 20 to 25 minutes. Cut through immediately before cooling, then cool on wire rack for at least 10 minutes before serving.