Earl Grey Scones- Perfectly light and tender scones with earl grey tea leaves and a vanilla bean glaze. These scones are perfect for breakfast or afternoon tea.
Freeze butter for at least 10 to 15 minutes and then with a box grater grate the butter into fine pieces. This helps the process and allows the butter to get dispersed into the scone dough more evenly. Place butter back into the freezer until needed. Option B is to just cut the butter into small pieces about ½ inch cubes keeping the butter as cold as possible.
Earl Grey Tea:
In a small pot heat up the heavy cream until just simmering and then add in the earl grey tea bag. Allow it to step for 10 minutes and then discard the tea bag. Let the heavy cream cool until room temperature and then place in the freezer or fridge to cool down. You may want to do this ahead of time as you don't want room temperature or warm heavy cream when mixing the scone dough.
Scone Dough:
Preheat oven to 400F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
In the bowl of your stand mixer with a paddle attachment add in all your dry ingredients and two bags of tea leaves. Add the cold butter into the flour mixture and mix on low speed until the butter pieces are the pea sized pieces. This step will vary based upon the size of your butter.
Once the butter is covered in flour add in half pf the steeped heavy cream. The dough should slowly start coming together. You'll see dry flour at the bottom of the mixer and pour the heavy cream on to it to directly moistened the dry spot. Mix until the dough just comes together and then pour out onto a cleaned lightly floured surface.
Form the earl grey scone dough into a ball and then flatten with a rolling pin until it's about ½ inch thick. You should get 6 large or 8 smaller triangle scones. A circle cookie cutter can be used but you'll risk the flaky scone texture by trying to re-roll the dough and cut more scones out of it.
Place scones on the prepared baking sheet allow it some wiggle room for it to spread.
Brush the tops of the scones with heavy cream
Bake the scones in the middle rack oven for 14 to 16 minutes. The top and sides of the scones will be a golden-brown color.
Once scones are out of the oven allow them to cool.
Vanilla Bean Glaze:
In a small bowl add in the powdered sugar, vanilla paste and half the heavy cream. Mix with a whisk until there are no lumps, slowly adding one tablespoon of heavy cream at a time until desired consistency.
Assembly:
Drizzle the glaze on the scones if desired and then allow the icing to harden before enjoying!
Notes
Notes: 2 bags goes into batter, cut the tea bags and add just the leaves 1 bag gets steeped into the heavy cream