Food & Cooking Recipes Breakfast & Brunch Recipes Bread Recipes Orange Cream Scones 4.0 (108) Orange liqueur and chewy currants take these tender scones over the top. Prep Time: 30 mins Cook Time: 20 mins Total Time: 2 hrs 5 mins Servings: 20 Jump to recipe Our orange scones are made with butter, heavy cream, and a mix of flours for a tender, melt-in-your-mouth baked good that's bursting with citrus flavor. Sifting the flour and folding the dough before forming the scones helps to ensure light, flaky layers, while soaking currants in Grand Marnier packs orange flavor into every bite. We recommend using a food processor for this recipe as it makes quick work of incorporating the butter into the flour mixture, but you can use a pastry cutter or your hands instead. Don't skip the egg wash or sprinkle of sugar before baking—they lend a polished look to the finished result that makes them suitable for any afternoon tea. The Best Way to Store Flour, Sugar, and Other Baking Staples to Keep Them Fresh Key Steps for Tender Scones Use a combination of flours: Using a mix of flours—in this case cake flour and all-purpose—keeps the dough from becoming heavy and dense as the scones come together. Cake flour contains less protein than other flours and therefore doesn’t bind as well when blended with liquid; this produces a light and airy finished texture. Don't over-mix: Over working your dough can cause baked goods to come out tough and dense, as the more they’re mixed, the more the proteins in the flour are encouraged to bind to one another. To keep things nice and light, pulse—don’t process—the butter and flour mixture in step three, and only add half of the flour to the food processor. Use a bowl and spatula to gently stir in the rest, leaving nice pieces of butter throughout the mixture for maximum tenderness. Fold your dough: If you’ve made biscuits before, you’re likely familiar with the process of folding dough to build flaky, delicate layers. For this recipe, you’ll fold the dough into thirds like a letter, then gently flatten it with a rolling pin before folding it again. Sanding sugar, which you find at craft stores and specialty cookware stores, adds a sparkly finish to these tender scones. If you can't find any, you can use granulated sugar instead. Directions Heat oven; prepare baking sheet: Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Plump fruit: In a small bowl, combine Grand Marnier, dried fruit, and orange zest. Allow fruit to plump, at least one hour or up to overnight in the refrigerator. Whisk dry ingredients: In a large bowl, whisk together cake flour, all-purpose flour, granulated sugar, baking powder, and salt. Transfer one half of the flour mixture to a food processor. Add butter and pulse: Add the butter and pulse several times to combine. Do not over-process; some butter pieces should remain the size of large peas, while others pieces will be smaller. Combine with remaining flour mixture: Add the contents of the food processor back to the bowl with the dry ingredients. Stir to combine. Combine wet and dry ingredients: In a small bowl, whisk to combine the cream, egg, and egg yolk. Create a well in the middle of the flour mixture and gradually add the cream mixture. Using a large spatula or wooden spoon, draw the dry ingredients over the wet ingredients, being sure to scrape from the bottom of the bowl to incorporate the dry crumbs. Mix in fruit: Add the plumped fruit and gently mix. Do not overwork the dough. Fold dough: Turn dough out onto lightly floured work surface. Pat into a narrow rectangle about 1 inch thick. With the short side facing you, fold rectangle into thirds like a business letter. Turn dough a quarter turn clockwise, so the flap opening faces right, like a book. This is the first turn. Fold again: With a rolling pin or your hands, gently pat into another narrow rectangle, about 1 inch thick. Repeat folding and turning process to complete a second turn. Cut into rounds: Using lightly floured hands, pat dough out into a 1 1/4-inch-thick rectangle. Cut out rounds, spaced as closely together as possible, using a floured 2-inch round biscuit cutter. Dough may be rerolled once and additional rounds may be cut out. Dust biscuit cutter with flour as needed between uses to keep dough from sticking. Bake scones: Transfer rounds to prepared baking sheet, about 1 1/2 inches apart. Brush with egg white and sprinkle with fine sanding sugar. Bake until golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes. Let cool 15 minutes on a wire rack before serving, or serve at room temperature. Storage Baked scones can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to two days. If desired, reheat scones in a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven for five to 10 minutes before serving. More Scone Recipes to Try: Fast Raspberry Scones Blueberry-Buttermilk Scones Lemon Scones Herb-Cheddar Scones Irish Soda Scones Rhubarb-Buckwheat Scones Updated by Esther Reynolds Esther Reynolds Esther Reynolds is an experienced recipe developer, recipe tester, food editor, and writer with over a decade of experience in the food and media industries.