I usually make shaped scones and biscuits. But I was low on both time and counter space yesterday, so I decided to give these simple "drop scones" a try. The dough is very quick to toss together and then all it needs is for mounds of it to be spooned onto the baking sheet and a few minutes in the oven and you have nearly-instant scones!

The original recipe calls for a bit of sugar, but I decided to roll with an erythritol-based sweetener in order to make them sugar-free. Either one works fine. I also opted to omit the salt from the recipe and just use salted butter instead of the unsalted that the recipe called for. And, since I'm in NZ right now, I swapped out the all-purpose (moderate-protein) flour for plain (soft/low-protein) flour. In other cases, I might use "high grade" (hard/high-protein) flour as a closer equivalent to the all-purpose, but in the case of scones and biscuits, where you don't really want or need the gluten development anyway, I felt like soft flour would be the better choice.

Blueberry Drop Scones

Slightly adapted from The Big Book of Breakfast by Maryana Vollstedt

Ingredients

• 250g soft (plain/standard/cake) flour
• 1/4 sugar¹
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 85g salted butter
• 1 c. fresh or frozen blueberries (thawed if frozen)
• 1 large egg
• 3/4 c. milk

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 220°C (425°F).
2. Combine the flour and sugar.
3. Sift in baking powder and mix well.
4. Cut in the butter until blended.
5. Add the blueberries and toss to combine.
6. Beat the egg into the milk and then add the wet ingredients to the dry. Mix with a fork until just combined.
7. Spoon mounds of the dough onto a baking sheet. You should get ~12 scones.
8. Optionally sprinkle the top of each scone with a little extra sugar.
9. Bake at 220°C (425°F) until cooked through and just starting to brown (~12 minutes).
10. Transfer to wire rack to cool.

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¹ Feel free to swap this out for a sugar-free sweetener of your choice. Just make sure that you adjust the amount accordingly if it's not a 1:1 substitute. ^Back