Milk/Cream

Sweet Potato Butterscotch Scones

January 26, 2015
4.5
2 Ratings
  • Makes 8 scones
Author Notes

I started making these years ago when living in Japan, and I was searching for baked goods that I could pull off in our teeny-tiny convection oven. Scones were an easy win. These are lightly adapted from Love & Olive Oil's Pumpkin Scones with Cinnamon Sugar Glaze, and have remained in regular rotation -- even after I got back to a regular-sized oven.

For the sweet potato purée, you'll want to bake at least one medium-sized sweet potato until soft. I normally bake a few small one or two medium/large ones -- to account for any bad spots you might get, and so I have extra purée, I almost always want to bake a second batch in a day or two.

I blitz the cooked sweet potato flesh in my mini food processor to get it really smooth. I'm sure mashing it well with a fork would work just as well if you are not burdened with perfectionist tendencies. —Lindsay-Jean Hard

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Ingredients
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
  • 6 tablespoons unsalted butter
  • 1/3 cup sweet potato purée (see head note)
  • 1/3 cup soy milk (or milk/cream of your choosing)
  • 1/3 cup brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1/4 cup butterscotch chips
Directions
  1. Heat oven to 425° F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
  2. Cut the butter into small pieces, put the pieces into a small bowl, and set it in the freezer.
  3. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger in a medium-sized bowl. Set the bowl into the freezer.
  4. In another small bowl, whisk together the sweet potato purée, soy milk, brown sugar, and vanilla. Set this bowl in the freezer and remove the butter and the bowl with the flour mixture.
  5. Cut the butter into the flour mixture until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs, and you still have small pieces of butter visible.
  6. Stir in the sweet potato mixture -- it will look very dry and crumbly, don't panic -- and then stir in the butterscotch chips.
  7. Knead just long enough until the dough comes together -- too long and the dough will get sticky. I like to do this right in the bowl, but you can also dump it out onto a counter.
  8. Form the the dough into a circle, about 1 inch thick, then slice it into 8 wedges. Put the scones on the baking sheet, and bake for about 15 minutes or until the scones are light brown on the bottom.

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I like esoteric facts about vegetables. Author of the IACP Award-nominated cookbook, Cooking with Scraps.

2 Reviews

MrsWheelbarrow January 26, 2015
All I can say? Get out of town. These hit me where I live. Thanks LJH.
Lindsay-Jean H. January 29, 2015
Thanks MrsW!