Light, buttery chai scones with a cinnamon-sugar topping. Let’s spice it up!

These scones have an insane amount of butter in them, and that’s why they’re awesome! When you form the dough into a disc you can just see the massive chunks of butter in them!

Have you ever gone to a cafe or a coffeehouse and gotten a scone for a snack? They’re rocks, right? You count yourself lucky to make it out with all your teeth intact. They are dry and dense, and are simply not worth the dental costs. Sometimes I’m tempted to bang it on the table to see which one will crack first– the scone or the table. But then I remember I’m in a public place, and I might get some weird looks if I start beating up a table with a scone. The headline the next day: College Student has Mental Breakdown Over Rock Scone.

Anyways… you know why they’re so nasty? Because the fool of a baker destroyed their butter. When you make scones, you use a pastry cutter, two knives, or a food processor to cut the butter into the flour. But you want your butter to still be in nice big chunks. This way when they bake there are nice big pockets of butter that melt to add moisture, and the pockets where the butter used to be makes the scones light. The butter should be in chunks slightly bigger than green peas…when in doubt, you’d rather cut the butter in too little than too much. So next time you order a scone and are given a rock, return it and ask for undemolished butter.

Your butter must be super cold when you cut it in. Even the warmth of your hands will warm it too much when you cut it into cubes. So what I do is cut the butter first and pop it back in the fridge to get cold again while I get everything else together. If it’s still too warm, I pop it in the freezer for a couple minutes. 

This is what your butter should look like once it’s cut in. I highly recommend using a pastry cutter to cut the butter in. You can use a food processor or two knives, but I have found that it’s too easy to destroy your butter in the food processor and the two knifes take forever (I’m not a patient baker when it comes to scones). 

Then you will add in the wet ingredients, form the dough into a disc, cut the disc into wedges, and dump cinnamon-sugar on top. 

Bake it up! Don’t worry it there are a few little burnt spots on the edges… that’s just because you had a butter pocket on the edge… just trim is off with a knife.

They may look undercooked in the middle too but just separate them a little and you’ll see that they are cooked.

Happy scone eatin’!

…and voilà!