Easy Chocolate Chip Scones

Scones are one of my favorite breakfast pastries. They feel fancy and indulgent, but they’re pretty approachable for home bakers. When done right, they’re beautifully buttery and fluffy on the inside, and there’s so much potential for flavors. After several scone attempts turned out not so great, I finally nailed it with this Chocolate Chip Scones recipe.

For my Chocolate Chip Scones recipe, I used King Arthur’s “Simple Scones” recipe as my base, and made some of my own adjustments from there. Fortunately that recipe is pretty much a blank canvas, so it lent well to my creativity and changes. I’ll definitely use it as a starting point for other scones recipes in the future. Foreshadowing? Maybe.

These scones are super tender, fluffy, buttery, a little flaky, and 100% melt-in-your-mouth delicious. They’re sweet without being too sweet. You can make a batch in as little as an hour, if you skip the chilling step. And that means you can wake up, make scones, and have them with your morning coffee or tea. Talk about a perfect weekend breakfast.

Tips for making Chocolate Chip Scones:

Use buttermilk instead of regular milk or cream. It’s not as fatty, especially compared to heavy cream, and the added acidity helps keep the dough soft and tender. It also helps keep the sweetness down.

Keep your ingredients and tools cold—especially the butter and buttermilk! Cold ingredients lead to a better rise in the final baked product. I’ve started keeping a couple sticks of butter in the freezer, just so they’re nice and cold whenever I want to make scones or biscuits. Frozen butter is much easier to work with in some situations.

Grate the butter instead of cutting it in. As a friend of mine once said, “Cutting butter is something they make you do in Hell, I’m sure of it.” Grating butter is a lot easier and faster than cutting it in with a pastry cutter or forks. Just give it a good toss in your dry ingredients before adding the wet so it’s well combined!

Handle the dough as little as possible. That means minimal mixing, patting, folding, and shaping, to keep the dough as cold as possible. Mix the dough until it just comes together and everything is moistened; don’t overwork it! Heat from your hands can soften or melt the butter, which will ruin the texture and they’ll fall flat. And no one wants flat scones.

Chill your scones before baking! Noticing a theme here? I chilled mine for about half an hour while my oven preheated. After cutting your scones, chill them to keep the texture tender and flaky, and yield a good rise.

Most of these tips can also be applied to making biscuits. I’ve never chilled my cut biscuits, though, just kept everything as cold as possible.

Ready to make some Chocolate Chip Scones? These are sure to be a hit at home, with your friends or family. They’ll make a great addition to any breakfast or brunch gathering, especially if tea is involved! These are best served warm with butter, or clotted cream, if you want to get really British.

Thanks so much for reading, y’all! If you make these scones, or any of my recipes, I’d love to see your results! Share a picture and tag me on Instagram so I can admire your bakes.

If you enjoy these Chocolate Chip Scones, you might also like:

• Apple Cider Muffins 
• Bacon and Cheese Quiche
• Browned Butter Chai Madeleines
• Best Ever Avocado Toast
• Baked Peach Donuts