White Chocolate Raspberry Scones Recipe Review {Pinterest Success!}

Two Pinterest successes in a row! That's so rare! This time, I found a recipe on Rock Recipes for White Chocolate Raspberry Scones and today, I'm going to take you through a review of Barry Parson's recipe. First off, let me say that I have never ever made a scone before, and have only ever tasted a few in my life, so I definitely appreciated the comment section on this recipe, there aren't pictures to show each step, so the comments (and subsequent note updates) are very helpful.

Gathering My Supplies

• Food Processor- this is by far the easiest way to prep the scone dough, I use my Cuisinart Prep 11 Pulse, it comes with two blades, and for this, I used my dough blade.

• However, I was being incredibly ditzy while trying to use the food processor, and ended up needing my Cuisinart 4-Cup Chopper (a mini food processor), which was okay because it's one of my favorite kitchen products!

• Rock Recipes says that if you don't have a food processor, you can use 2 knives, or a dough blender (I haven't tried this one, but I trust Cuisinart as a good brand, and want this one!)

• 2 knives (standard butter knifes)

• Large Bowl {I love my set of Joseph Joseph 8-Piece nesting set! It came with a large bowl, colander, mesh sieve, liquid measuring cup, and standard measuring cups, the 7-piece set is sufficient for bakers with the 1/6 cup; but the 9-piece set even comes with a 1/6 cup)

• Cutting Board

• Knife sharp enough to cut through a lemon without pressing all the juice out

• Something to juice the lemons, at Kyle's house, we have a stand-up citrus press, at my house, we just use this cute little 2-sided citrus reamer. To me, some kind of citrus press or juicer is one of the more useful, seemingly uni-purpose kitchen tool. You can always use a fork to juice a lemon, but it's significantly messier.

• Sieve (fine mesh strainer), I use this Cuisinart set of 3, the mini size is perfect for tea, testing ravioli, and keeping the seeds out of my lemon juice. I also use the sieve in my Joseph Joseph set a lot.

• Whisk

• Fork

• Spatula

• Bench scraper

• Pastry mat

• rolling pin (this Joseph Joseph adjustable rolling pin is at the TOP of my wish list!)

• parchment paper

• cookie sheet

• pastry brush

• kitchen scale

Rounding Up My Ingredients

So, as always, I used my kitchen scale to weigh out my dry ingredients; that's the 3 cups of flour, 1/2 cup of sugar (I used regular white sugar this time instead of my toasted sugar), 6 tsp baking powder (which sounds like a lot, but is part of what helps give the scones the right texture), and 1/2 tsp salt.

Next, I cubed my 3/4 cup unsalted butter, and placed them in teacups in the ice machine of my freezer to keep the cutter as cool as possible. This will make the butter more chunky in the dough, meaning that it won't mix in as thoroughly. But that's good because the small bits of butter left are what we want.

The recipe calls for 2 tbsp. of fresh squeezed lemon juice. First roll out your lemon, super easy, just press firmly and roll the lemon back and forth a few inches to get the juices flowing. I'm not sure if it's an old wives tale, or if it actually works, but it's on my to-do list to test it out.

roll out the lemon

cut the lemon

use your reamer to juice

look how good my little reamer did!

pour through sieve

it gets out all the pulp and seeds

Here, I've shown you what I mean by each of the steps described. Notice how much juice I was able to get from just one lemon! My little reamer did a pretty good job emptying it out. But, especially with a reamer, a lot of seeds and pulp get into the juice. This is where the sieve is super helpful because you can sift out the icky pieces and you're just left with the juice.

The Instructions

Steps 1-3

The instructions call for using a food processor, two knives held between fingers, or a dough blender. I was super excited because I love getting to use my kitchen gadgets, but was then quickly disappointed to realize that it wasn't working! It turns out that I was just being ditzy because I had the bowl turned with the handle to the back of the device. It actually needs to be turned to the front of the device in order to trigger the safety button. Oops.

I don't have a dough blender-- yet. So I tried using the two knives technique described in the recipe. It wasn't too specific, so I improvised by holding one in each hand and sort of going at it.

This was taking too much time, so I tried using a potato masher next. It was also a bit difficult, and I was worried that I would create one big butter ball and not break it up as much as I needed to. By the time I realized the most obvious solution, I wanted to smack myself in the forehead. It was my Cuisinart 4-Cup Mini Chopper to the rescue! I've had this little guy for years and it's been a life saver on more than one occasion. I split my dough mixture (the dry ingredients + the cold butter) into small increments and pulsed it for a few seconds in the chopper. I had to be careful not to over-blend the dough. Here's a picture of what the pea-sized butter bits should look like after blending the dough.

Step 4

The recipe calls for 6 ounces of high-quality white chocolate, broken into small bits. Well, I didn't have enough white chocolate. So I used what I had left of my Nestle White Chocolate chips and supplemented the rest with my Nestle Semi-Sweet Milk chocolate Mini Chips. {{Bonus tip, if you're looking for a low-cal way to satisfy your chocolate craving, these are great and go well with Greek yogurt, Halo Top Ice Cream, or just as a stand-alone munchie.}}

I've had these white chocolate chips for a while, so some of them had melted together. Also, the recipe on Rock Recipes didn't say how small the pieces were supposed to be, so I put the white chocolate chips and min chocolate chips in my mini chopper and pulsed for a few seconds to get them small enough. But I made sure to stop the machine before the chips turned to chocolate powder.

Step 5

Super easy, mix together your liquid ingredients (lemon juice, vanilla extract, and whole milk)

Step 6

Here's where I started to mess up. But also where the author's notes and readers' comments started helping. I should have read them a bit closer. The instructions say to pour the liquid mixture over the flour mixture...

The recipe calls to mix the liquid and dry mixtures with a fork. To fluff it lightly until it starts to form a ball.

It is at this point that Rock Recipes says you can add a little extra flour to make the ball. The notes section says that it depends on how you measure flour, it is my belief that because Rock Recipes uses volume measurements, and not weight, it typically uses more flour than it calls for.

Steps 7-9

Adding the raspberries is obviously a very crucial step to the (mostly) White Chocolate Raspberry Scones. Rock Recipes recommends using frozen berries as they are less delicate and "easier to incorporate into the scone dough." However, I wonder about the liquid content of both types of berries. This time I used frozen berries and kept them in the freezer until it was time to mix them up. Next time though, I'm going to use fresh berries (I usually avoid doing this because of the delicacy and the price difference), but when I made this dough, the frozen berries made it so wet, it was almost impossible to work with.

Rock Recipes also warns against over-working the dough as this may lead to dense and heavy scones. While tasty, I think I overmixed my dough...

Step 10

Here's where I love using my Baker's Joy (a non-stick spray made with flour instead of butter) and a pastry mat. For example, I'd be super scared of

staining my table (which my mom refinished and painted white).

Here's what the dough looked like fresh out of the bowl. I had to add a little extra flour because it was so wet and almost unworkable.

My bench scraper has a very handy ruler on one side and I used this to measure my dough to 1" thickness.

Then cup the scones and place them on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

The recipe says that it makes 8 large scones, or 19 "breakfast sized." I cut mine in to 27 pieces, Oops! Maybe that's why mine weren't as fluffy. I used the same bake time for significantly smaller scones.

Steps 11-12

There's an optional step to use an egg and water mixture to wash over the top of the scones. I believe that this gives them a nicer, crispier, flakier top. So to test it out, I did one tray without the wash (left) and one tray with the wash (right).

There's another optional step to sprinkle the tops with turbinado sugar and boy do I wish that I had tried this on a few. That sounds so good, doesn't it?

Step 13

Bake at 375*F for 25 minutes, or "until a light golden brown." I may have overcooked mine just a tad.

My Thoughts On the Whole Process, Final Product, & What I Did Wrong

First of, I should have used fewer berries and kept them more frozen (I'm not sure how I could have made them more frozen, but ti'd be worth a shot!), I also should have cut my scones larger. Honestly though, these were DAMN delicious!

Post-Baking Wish-List

• After pulling out my Cuisinart Food Processor several times in the past few days, I really wish that I wasn't keeping it in the box, it's sort of a pain to keep putting in the box and out. I really want this Cuisinart 2-Blad and Disc Holder, it looks awesome for storing the sharp instruments safely and in a smaller capacity than the too-big box.

• After struggling with my food processor, I really want this Cuisinart Dough Blender now. The blades push through the butter evenly, cutting through it without melting or mixing it up too much.