Vanilla Bean & Mascarpone Scones

Vanilla Bean & Mascarpone Scone
Served with Mascarpone and a sliced Strawberry.

Mmmmm...Decadent and light, these are scones that complement tea in a lovely way. I try not to make them very often, because one is never enough. The vanilla flavor offers sweetness to the otherwise not-quite-sweet taste of mascarpone, and if you serve with a strawberry and whipped cream in the middle...talk about a perfect afternoon tea.






The Recipe:

I use vanilla bean paste in lots of recipes
that call for vanilla extract. This Madagascar
Bourbon Vanilla Bean Paste is tasty!

Adapted from Genevieve Knights' Scones.


200 g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
50 g caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla paste or 1 scraped vanilla bean
200 g mascarpone
1/4 cup water




Instructions:


Preheat the oven to 450ºF. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder and salt to combine. With a wooden spoon, add the sugar, vanilla and mascarpone. Using a wooden spoon or a fork, work the mascarpone into the dry ingredients until you have even-sized clumps. Sprinkle over the water then knead until a dough is just formed.


Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Roll dough to an even 1 cm thickness. With a 5 cm diameter cookie cutter, cut as many scones as you can from the flattened dough and place on a parchment-paper covered baking tray.


When you have gotten as many rounds from the dough as possible, ball the remains of the dough together and "knead" just enough to reattach the cuttings of dough. Spread to 1 cm thickness and cut as many rounds as you can again. Repeat until you have a racquetball sized ball of dough, then split into two, ball each half and flatten into the final two scones (they will look a little different).


Bake at 450ºF until lightly golden on top (about 6-8 minutes).
Allow to cool on a cooling rack. 


Serve with toppings of your choice.

The Process:

The ingredients all weighed out.

The consistency of the dough after mixing in the mascarpone.

Added 1/4 cup water, plus a little drizzle extra, as the dough was too dry to stick together with just 1/4 cup water.

Just out of the oven. Beautiful!

Lightly Golden

Notes:
I made my scones slightly larger (I only got 11 scones out of this recipe, but it says it makes 15 servings). 


My scalloped-edge cookie cutter started to stick on the dough after the first one, so I dusted the edges with flour to keep it from sticking any more. 


Since I'm in the U.S. and my oven tells me temperatures in Fahrenheit, I heated my oven to 425ºF and baked my scones until they were light gold on top, about 12 minutes. I could have heated it to 450ºF and had them bake a little bit faster.


I didn't have whipped cream and was too lazy to go get some, so I spread a little layer of extra mascarpone in the middle of the scone and layered a strawberry on top. What a decadent little sandwich!


Results: 


This is the second time I've made these scones, and I love them just as much now as I did the first time. Definitely a recipe to try. My suggestion: enjoy alongside some coffee or tea.