Nutella has become a staple in my pantry. I mostly spread it on English muffins and graham crackers. But recently I took it to the next level and merged Nutella into the baking world. Sort of. Making frosting isn't technically baking. I made a banana cake and topped it with Nutella frosting. Banana + Nutella = heaven, by the way. And now I can say I have officially baked with my favorite chocolate hazelnut spread with these chocolatey scones.
This week our Club: Baked hostess, Lorraine of PhDcupcaker, selected Nutella Scones for the group to bake. I have been looking forward to this recipe because a.) I have never made scones before and b.) a new way to incorporate Nutella into breakfast is a good thing.
The recipe reads pretty simply. It doesn't require a mixer or any fancy tools. But apparently it requires a little finesse. It definitely wasn't easy as I thought it would be. The authors of Baked Explorations caution you to not over mix the dough to ensure you have nice tender scone. They also recommend using your hands to knead the dough. I don't know about anyone else, but my dough was beyond sticky and I spent quite a bit of time trying to keep the dough from forming a giant chocolate mitten on my hand. Next time I would keep a little flour on hand to help with the sticky fingers. Now that I have one scone run under my belt, I'm looking forward to trying other flavor combinations.
I did make a couple of small alterations to the recipe. The original recipe calls for toasted chopped hazelnuts to be added to the dough. I omitted the nuts and to dress it up a bit, I sprinkled coarse raw sugar on top for a little sparkle and crunch. I made half the recipe (yielding 6 small scones) but still added the full amount of sugar (only 1/4 cup in total) because some other bakers had noted that the scone wasn't very sweet. Even with the extra sugar, I still thought it wasn't very sweet. But that's okay, the Nutella drizzled on top brings up the sweetness to just the right level. The scone is tender and almost cakey inside with a little crunch on the outside. Good stuff. This is my kind of breakfast.
To get the recipe head over to Lorraine's site. To see how other Club: Bakers' scones turned out click here.
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