You can watch me make these squash scones with my son, Charlie, on my show Zoë Bakes on Max!
In this episode my eldest son, Henri, and I head to a pumpkin patch to pick out squash and pumpkins to bake with. We make the scones below, plus a delicious pumpkin creme brulee.
Scones are a special thing in our house. Back in 2013 I wrote this post about Charlie having his first pop-up bakery (he was 12 at the time) after my husband, Graham, challenged him to have scones hot and ready before he went to work the next day. It was great to be back in the kitchen with Charlie making these together with an autumn twist!
If you like scones, be sure to try my other recipes! I have this Caramelized White Chocolate Peach Scone or a very popular Blueberry Scone recipe. I hope you’ll give one of these a try!
If you enjoyed the episode, be sure to check out my deep dive on the episode, featuring a Q&A with the Barten family, who owns the pumpkin patch we visited.
Ingredients
- 1/4 tsp kosher salt plus more for cooking water
- 2 cups (336g) butternut squash diced
- 3 cups (390g) all-purpose flour plus more for dusting
- 1/4 cup (50g) sugar plus more for sprinkling
- 1 tbsp plus 1 tsp baking powder
- 3/4 cup (170g) unsalted butter cut into cubes and chilled
- 2 large eggs
- 3/4 cup (180ml) half-and-half
- pinch nutmeg
- 1/2 cup white chocolate chopped (NOT coating chocolate)
- 2 tbsp heavy cream
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Bring a medium saucepan of water to a boil, add some salt, and cook the squash for 3 minutes. Drain and cool. Reserve.
- In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and nutmeg. Add the butter and cut it into the flour with a pastry blender until it resembles cornmeal, but you also want to keep some of the butter in pea-sized pieces, which will create the flakiness in your scones. Fold in the cooled squash and chocolate.
- In a small bowl, mix together the eggs and half and half. Add this mixture to the dry ingredients and mix to combine.
- Turn the dough out onto a floured surface to do the gentle kneading. You are really just turning the dough over on itself; using a bench scraper is very handy to get this done without overworking the dough. Turn the dough 12 times.
- Roll the dough into a log and cut it into 8 equal pieces. Place on the prepared baking sheet. Brush the top of the scones with the cream and sprinkle generously with sugar. Bake until set in the middle and golden, about 30 minutes. Allow to cool on the pan before removing to a wire rack.
See all of my scones recipes here!
My family and I love these around the holidays. Soooo good.
I didn’t notice any trouble with overly wet squash, but I was initially worried about how large the squash dice should be. (A rough guideline would have bern nice, but in the end I just concentrated on making the pieces uniformly sized.) I usually make scones with cream only, but was happy that the butter and liquids incorporated so easily! The dough seemed to want to be a disc, so I ended up cutting wedges. The interplay of the chocolate and squash was very subtle; I noticed the chocolate scent most during baking, but I think I chopped the chocolate a bit too finely since I couldn’t detect the chunks right out of the oven. (I’ll see if that changes once they cool and reheat.) My mom (like me) is a big butternut squash fan, and found the result intriguing and delicious! A keeper…
I would like to make these and I’m wondering about roasting rather than boiling the squash.
These are delicious! The sweetest part about them is the butternut squash. I did run into one problem. The squash was really wet and even after draining they threw off the consistency of the dough. I added more flour and they were ok but next time I will dry the squash on a towel first and add the wet mixture slower.
Was pretty tasty, but a little wet to work with.
I just made your scones today with my 3 year old granddaughter. The additional assistance proved to be a bit of a challenge! But she did well breaking the eggs and stirring the dry ingredients! Did you find that when you bake them, it sometimes takes less than 30minutes? Of my two pans, the lighter topped ones had burned bottoms and the darker topped ones did not burn on the bottom. I put them in the oven at the same time. I think I will try them again when I have a little less distraction! The flavor was so good. And I have plenty of butternut squash to make another batch soon… Thanks so much!!
When do you add the chocolate and the nutmeg that the recipe ingredients list but don’t account for in the instructions.
Hi Tina,
Thank you for pointing this out to me, I fixed the instructions to indicate when they are added.
Cheers, Zoë
These look so good and I didn’t want to mess them up so I followed the recipe exactly as written and they turn out perfect.
Hi Albertina,
Yay, I am so thrilled!
Zoë
I made these scones. My first time ever making scones. They were fantastic. They are now going to be a Fall tradition. I did make one little change. I iced them with an orange zest icing, but only after eating two each. Just an experiment. Fresh warm scones, amazing.