Iced Honey-apple Scones with Spelt

These are the scones to make the instant you feel fall in the air. They’ve got apples, honey and tangerine, flavors of the season, and the surprise addition of some spelt, a wheat flour that speckles their interiors. Their texture is light, and because they are only slightly sweet, they can take a slick of icing. My choice is a simple confectioners’ sugar icing, brushed on when the scones come out of the oven. While the icing is still wet, I sometimes sprinkle the tops with a few grains of bee pollen. The pollen is optional, but its light sweetness and chewiness finish the scones nicely.

The dough for these is very sticky, so sticky that you might want to make drop scones rather than patty-cake the dough it into a disk and cut wedges. It’s a good option. Whatever you do, don’t decide that the dough needs more flour—it doesn’t! All that stickiness bakes to a light, airy crumb.

A word on working ahead: The dough can be made, cut and frozen up to 2 months ahead—make sure to wrap the scones airtight—and then baked straight from the freezer. As soon as you start to preheat the oven, place the scones on a lined baking sheet and let them stand until the oven reaches temperature. You may need to bake them a few minutes longer.

Center a rack in the oven and preheat it to 400 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a baking mat.

Working in a large bowl, whisk together both flours, the baking powder, baking soda and salt. Finely grate the zest of the tangerine, clementine or orange into the bowl and whisk it in—hold onto the fruit. Scatter the bits of cold butter over the flour, reach in and use your fingers to mash and press and mush the butter into the flour. (You can do this with a pastry cutter, but it’s really easier and faster to use your fingers.) Keep tossing the dry ingredients around and smushing the butter until you’ve broken it into flour-coated pieces as small as cornflakes and as big as peas. Add the apple to the bowl and toss until covered in flour. Pour over the honey and, using a fork, give the mixture a couple of turns. There’s no need to be thorough now.

Whisk the egg and milk together in a small bowl, squeeze in the juice from the zested citrus and stir to blend. Pour the mixture over the dry ingredients and, using the fork, toss, turn and stir everything together until the flour is moistened. With your hands, gently—and sparingly—squeeze and knead the dough just enough to pull it into a ball. It’s futile (and unnecessary) to expect a smooth, neat packet of dough, because this dough is wet and very sticky.

Now you’ve got a choice: If you want to make drop scones, choose an ice cream scoop—one with a capacity of ¼ cup is good, as is a ¼-cup measure or a large spoon—and scoop 12 portions of dough onto the baking sheet. If you want to make wedge shaped scones, turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and shape it into a circle that’s about 6½ inches across and 1 inch high (the height’s more important than the diameter here). Dust the top with flour. Using a bench scraper or a chef’s knife, cut the dough into quarters and then cut each quarter in half, so you have 8 wedges. Carefully transfer them to the baking sheet. (At this point, the scones can be froze for up to 2 months; see headnote.)

Bake the scones for 18 to 20 minutes, or until they’re tall and golden brown on top and bottom. Transfer the baking sheet to a rack and make the icing.

To make the icing: Put the sugar in a medium bowl and add the milk a little at a time, stirring with a small flexible spatula or a spoon. It’s hard to give a precise measurement for the milk—just keep stirring until you get a shiny icing that falls slowly from the tip of your spatula or spoon.

Spread some icing over each scone, using a silicone brush, a small offset spatula or a table knife. If you’d like, snkle over a little bee pollen while the icing is still wet.

Serve the scones as soon as the icing dries, or transfer to a rack and serve within the next 3 or 4 hours. You can wait longer, but the scones are best as close to freshly baked as possible.

Storing: These are best the day they’re made.



Excerpted from BAKING WITH DORIE: Sweet, Salty, & Simple © 2021 by Dorie Greenspan. Photography © 2021 by Mark Weinberg. Reproduced by permission of Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.