Pistachio Scones
I didn’t bake these scones for the express purpose of getting compliments.
The recipe
Yield: 16 scones
Time: 45 minutes
Ingredients
2 c (250 g) flour
¼ c (55 g) sugar
1 Tbsp (15 g) baking powder
¼ tsp (3 g) salt
1 stick (113 g or ½ c) salted butter, fridge-cold and cubed
1 and ⅓ c (200 g) pistachios
1 c (240 g) heavy cream
Pistachio cream (optional)
Instructions
1. Preheat your oven to 425°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or Silpat. Lightly flour a section of your counter.
2. Add the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt to a large bowl and mix to combine.
3. Add the cubed butter to the bowl and then, using a pastry cutter, cut the butter into the flour until the largest pieces of butter are the size of peas. (If you don’t have a pastry cutter, you can do this by gently rubbing the butter in with your fingertips instead.)
4. Add the pistachios and toss until coated with flour.
5. Add the heavy cream and stir the dough until almost combined, but there are some dry bits remaining. Then, knead the dough until it looks uniform.
6. Turn the dough out onto the floured section of counter and shape into a rectangle about 1 inch thick. Coat a sharp knife or a bench scraper with flour and then cut the dough into 16 squares. Transfer the scones to the parchment-lined baking sheet, spacing them an inch or two apart.
7. Brush a little bit of cream on the top of each scone and then generously sprinkle with sugar.
8. Bake the scones for 10–14 minutes, or until the bottoms look golden brown on the edges and the top corners are light golden. Remove them from the oven and let them cool on the sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack.
9. When the scones have cooled enough to eat, spread a layer of pistachio cream on the top of each one. Enjoy while still warm.
10. If you don’t eat all the scones the day they are baked, freeze them. Reheat them in a 400°F oven for 5–10 minutes or until they’re warmed through in the middle.
Notes and tips
The butter should be cold from the fridge. The colder your ingredients, the flakier the scones will be.
The pistachios can be unsalted, salted, roasted, or raw. Any combination is fine! I used roasted and salted (from Costco), and I liked the toasty flavor.
I got a jar of pistachio cream, also from Costco. It’s a pistachio version of Nutella, and it’s delicious!
The best thing you can do to make tender scones is to knead the dough as little as possible. (It’s fine if the dough is still sticky.) Kneading encourages the flour to develop gluten, the protein that binds the scones together. You want some gluten to form, but too much will make the scones tough and dry.
You don’t want a lot of color on your scones. A little color at the edges means it’s time to pull them. They get dry if you overbake them, so err on the side of underbaking.
The story
I just brought what I was baking this week to my Bible study breakfast. (No, this is not the Bible study where most of the taste testing happens. That one is a co-ed group that meets on Thursday nights. This is a women’s group that meets on Wednesday mornings, and the ladies aren’t used to my baked goods.)
Every time I bring dessert to a new group, I like to surreptitiously watch one person they try it. She is always focused on her conversation when she takes the first bite. She barely looks at the food. And then she chews, does a double take, looks down in amazement at the thing she just tasted, and interrupts her companion to gush about the scone because it is so delicious she can’t contain herself.
“Who made these?” the ladies kept asking. When they found out it was me, a steady stream of compliments came my way for the next half hour. “Pistachio is such a great flavor for a scone! I’ve never had anything like it before,” and “Most scones are dry, but not these!” and “This was the best scone I’ve ever eaten!” and the crown jewel: “Can I have the recipe?”
I was still musing happily on the drive home. That is, until my friend’s four-year-old got curious.
“Mrs. Cho, what’s in that container?” she asked.
“I made scones for the ladies for breakfast,” I replied.
“Do they have protein?” she wondered.
A bit taken aback (how does she even know what protein is?), I stammered, “No. No, they don’t.”
“Who brought the protein, then?” she asked.
“No one,” I said. “We had baked goods and fruit.”
“Well, that’s not very good. Your body needs protein,” she said matter-of-factly.
I opened my mouth to protest. Four-year-olds have such black-and-white thinking, and I was going to explain the nuance of life to her. Grownups could skip protein for breakfast and be fine. But now that I thought about it, I’d nodded off during the teaching time. And my stomach felt a tiny bit unsettled. And I was hungry for lunch already, even though I’d eaten only two hours ago. I closed my mouth.
The four-year-old was right, but I wasn’t going to be the one to tell her that.
Spread the snob
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I was one of those who tasted these scones and swooned. I waited patiently for the recipe and made it for a gathering. Everyone loved it, but I was a little disappointed because they were not as good as Megan's. The pistachios I had had shells. I decided to de-shell them rather than going shopping. That may be the reason the texture of the pistachios was not as crisp. My daughter used the same recipe and substituted blueberries, and the scones came out amazing. Thank you, Megan!