Soft, tender and buttery, these are the ultimate cream scones! Flavored with orange, you can have freshly baked scones in 45 minutes. They freeze beautifully too.

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If you turn on the oven now, in an hour you can have the kitchen smelling amazing and these buttery, mildly sweet orange and cream mini scones standing beside your mug of tea – coffee for me, please.

They are by far my favorite recipe; no surprise since it's adapted from Nancy Silverton, one of my most admired bakers ever.

If there was a tea time tradition in my family (as explained in the post on strawberry buttermilk scones) it was to eat freshly baked scones, something that made me a scone fan, both for eating and making.

Making the dough by hand:

Use a large bowl to mix the dry ingredients comfortably.
Add the butter. It must be very cold and in small pieces to ensure a great result. This is important if you cut the butter into the flour by hand (as opposed to using a pastry cutter) because it will take several minutes and you don't want the butter to start warming up and melting. (You can buy pastry cutters online).
Mix wet ingredients in another bowl before adding to the butter mixture. Mix lightly with a fork until you have a shaggy mass and dump it on a lightly floured counter.
Gather the dough into an irregular ball. This must be done with as few strokes as possible but the dough must be cohesive. It doesn't matter if there are dry spots here and there. This is not a smooth dough (image above).

Mixing the dough in the food processor:

The alternative to making the dough completely by hand is using the food processor (my favorite small appliance!) for the first part of the recipe.

Put the flour and other dry ingredients in the bowl of the food processor. Pulse to mix.
Scatter cold butter. Pulse a few times, just until the butter is the size of peas. It will be irregular. Don't overwork it.
Add the wet ingredients (lightly mix them first in a bowl) and pulse a few times using on/off and barely start bringing it together. Don't process until you have a ball! You should have a shaggy mass.
Finish in the counter, gathering the dough just enough so that you can cut the scones (images above).

Baked Orange and Cream Mini Scones on parchment paper

Scones have very simple ingredients, but a few pointers should be followed if you want to achieve soft, tender ones, nicely risen.

My 3 tips for making the best scones:

Very cold ingredients. I’m not kidding when I say frozen butter, at least very cold. And don’t take the cream half an hour before you start mixing the scones. Butter, cream, milk, they belong in the fridge until you need to scatter and pour them.
Don't overwork the dough. It should come together but still have floury patches. You don’t need to work it until it’s smooth, like a pie dough for instance. It is an uneven dough, with dry spots, and that’s good for flakiness later.
A rather high oven. They need that extra heat (and baking powder) to rise however they can in spite of all that butter and cream. And if by any chance you forgot to turn the oven on before you start with the mixing, please don’t leave the baking sheet with the cut scones waiting on the counter. Put them in the fridge or freezer the ten or fifteen minutes it takes for the oven to reach its temperature.

How to store and keep scones

One of the most wonderful things about scones is that they can be frozen raw, already formed. So you can make a big batch, cut them, put them on trays and freeze them.

Once frozen, put them in a plastic bag or container so the tray doesn’t occupy freezer space.

That way, you can bake them to order! Directly from the freezer into a hot oven. Warm, freshly baked scones whenever you feel like it.

I love these with lemon zest too or a mix of orange and lemon. Enjoy!

Other recipes you might like:
Strawberry Buttermilk Scones
Parmesan Chive Scones
Best Buttermilk Scones
Double Cheese Scones

Let me know if you make this recipe! I’d love to hear what you think about it.
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