Easy orange chocolate scones recipe | Simone's Kitchen (2024)

posted by Simone van den Berg on Feb 27, 2014 (last updated Jan 13, 2024) 12 comments »

I have a sincere love of all things scone. My absolute favorite are scones with clotted cream and lemon curd. So so good. these orange chocolate scones can also be eaten without anything on it, as they are super delicious all by themselves.

Orange chocolate scones

​I had not made any scones before so this was my first try and now that I know how easy it is, I am definitely hooked. For these scones you need the following ingredients:

• self raising flour (or use all purpose flour in combination with baking powder)
• baking powder
• cold butter
• eggs
• sugar
• powdered sugar
• orange zest
• Greek yogurt
• dark chocolate bar
• little les than a cup milk

Even though self raising flour contains baking powder already you do need 4 extra teaspoons for this. I have followed the original recipe here from the Farmhouse cookbook.

Start by adding the dry ingredients to a large bowl and mix it through. Add the cold unsalted butter to it and mix until it resembles coarse crumbs. It will be quite dry at this point but you’ll still have to add the wet ingredients.

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Yogurt mix

For making the yogurt mixture you add yogurt and the eggs into a measuring cup (use one that holds at least 500 ml, but bigger is easier) Now add milk until the total comes up to 400 ml. You can also replace some of the milk with orange juice to enhance the orange flavor. Mix this through with a fork or a whisk. Take two tablespoons of the mixture out and keep it apart. You will use this later for brushing the scones.

Now you add the wet mixture into the flour mixture until it forms a dough. You add the zest, chopped chocolate and cranberries before you start mixing the two together.

Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead with your hands until it comes together. Don’t overmix as the scones will become dry if you do that. If you want you can use a food processor to mix the dough. But again be careful not to overmix.

Once you have a soft dough that is flexible (it might be somewhat sticky) flatten it to about 3 centimeters high (a little over 1 inch) Now use a round pastry cutter of around 7 cm (2.75 inch circle) and cut out round. The trick is to not twist the rings when you cut out the scone dough. Press down in one go for the best result.

If you don’t have a pastry cutter you can also use a sharp knife although the size won’t probably be as consistent if you do.

Baking orange chocolate scones

Using a baking sheet with parchment paper add all the cut out scones to the prepared baking sheet and, using a pastry brush, brush them with the yogurt mixture that you kept apart. Now place the baking tray into the preheated oven and bake them for around 15 minutes or until risen and golden brown. Take out of the oven and place on a cooling rack to cool down.

Serve your orange chocolate scones with whipped heavy cream, clotted cream and jam.

Variations

While these orange chocolate chip scones are already super delicious as they are you can absolutely vary them easily to create different scones each time. I also love to top of the scones with some orange glaze or sprinkle them with icing sugar. Or go wild and use a white chocolate drizzle.

You can make them into dark chocolate scones by adding cocoa powder to them and dark chocolate chips. You can also replace them dark chocolate chips for white chocolate chips. I’ve used chocolate chunks here but you can easily use a combination of chocolate. Mix white and dark together or only use cacao nibs for instance.

I’m in love with the flavor combination of orange and chocolate but you could make it into lemon scones too.

If you want to increase the orange flavor consider adding a bit of orange extract.

Serving

In terms of serving these chocolate orange scones I already mentioned that I love them with clotted cream or whipped heavy cream. You can also add different kinds of jams. My favorite is not jam but lemon curd or orange curd, but the next best thing is definitely strawberry or raspberry jam.

You can also serve them with fresh fruit if you want.

The scones keep for a few days in an airtight container at room temperature. If they get a little too dry why not use them to make a delicious bread and butter pudding?