Scones are simple things, just some flour, fat, liquid and some chemicals to make them light and fluffy. Being so simple they’re pretty easy things to understand, liquid hydrates the flour which provides structure, raising agents produce gas to lighten the dough, and the fat breaks up the dough to make it tender in a similar way to many pastries. For pastry, butter or shortening is typically used for the layers of fat that break up the dough to create the appropriate tender or flaky texture, these fats are solid at room temperature so can be worked into the dough (relatively) easily, and the same is true for scones. But there’s nothing to say that these are the only fats you can use, anything with a high fat content that isn’t liquid at room temperature would presumably do.

So what is better than butter? Peanut butter, obviously. I took a scone recipe and straight swapped out the butter for an equal quantity of peanut butter. Peanut butter has less fat, and isn’t really a solid, but I found that either freezing it and grating it into the flour (messy), or just chilling it and rubbing it in works perfectly well. Which makes you wonder what other fats could you sub into a scone recipe? And could you make croissants with (at least) partly peanut butter?

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Peanut butter scones

Author: Basic scone recipe adapted from Ideas in Food

Prep time:  10 mins

Cook time:  10 mins

Total time:  20 mins

 

For a bit of an extra peanutty kick in these scones substituted some of the flour for toasted, ground peanuts. Eat with jam for a pb and j sandwich as a scone.

Ingredients

• 60g smooth peanut butter
• 30g unsalted peanuts
• 220g plain flour
• ¾ tspn salt
• 25 g sugar
• 2 ½ tspn baking powder
• ½ tspn baking soda
• 150 – 200 ml buttermilk

Instructions

1. Some time before, wrap the peanut butter in cling film and either chill or freeze, depending on the method used below
2. Toast the peanuts, let cool and then grind
3. Sift the flour, baking powder, and soda, add the salt and sugar
4. Either grate the frozen peanut butter into the mixture, or rub the chilled peanut butter in with your fingertips
5. Add enough of the buttermilk to bring the mix together into a soft dough
6. Sprinkle the counter with flour and pat out the dough, fold it into thirds, repeat this three more times
7. Finally pat out the dough to a couple of centimetres thickness and cut into scones
8. Bake in a 220C oven for 10 minutes or until golden

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