How to Make Double Cheese Scones

In it you get all the pleasures of the golden, craggy-crusted pastry and its cushiony crumb along with the sharp, nutty depth and richness of a good cheddar toastie. Scones are a snap to make, too, which gives them the snug appeal of fresh-from-the-oven bread anytime the mood strikes.

You can casually knock out the dough and pop them in the oven as you’re whipping up a pot of soup or boil water for tea as you wait for them to bake.

For big cheesy savor, you might be inclined to cram as much cheddar (a cheese-scone standard) as possible into the dough. But I found that tons of cheese doesn’t make a great cheese scone; with cheddar, it makes a fragile, cloying, greasy pastry that barely holds itself together. That’s because cheese—especially a rich type like cheddar—is a source of fat, and it must be factored into the dough formula just as the butter is. 

The more strategic approach: Reduce the butter to accommodate as much cheese as possible, and use the boldest-tasting cheddar you can get.

I spent a few tests fiddling with the cheddar-to-butter ratio. After pulsing cold butter into the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt, and dry mustard to underscore the cheesy depth), I worked varying amounts of shredded cheddar (initially a basic variety) into the mix by hand before moistening it with a mixture of milk and egg.

I briefly kneaded the dough into a round, cut wedges that I brushed with some reserved milk-egg mixture to encourage a golden sheen, and baked them for about 15 minutes.

Eventually, I landed on 6 ounces of cheddar and 2 ounces of butter—enough combined richness to make the crumb both tender and structurally sound. Then I went cheddar shopping, targeting a well-aged block that had racked up big tang and toasty, sweet, caramelized notes as it matured.

Really good cheddar made strikingly more complex-tasting scones—but even that batch lacked depth.

So I supplemented the cheddar with a couple ounces of grated Parmesan. Its robust, saline complexity bolstered the scone’s savor, and because it’s low-moisture I was able to grind it into the flour mixture like a dry ingredient so that its complexity suffused every bite. (The relatively modest amount I was adding didn’t throw off the dough’s ratio of fat to flour.) 

Go mix up a batch right now. Get a pot of soup going. Break open a scone while it’s still warm. Maximum coziness awaits.