Apple and white cheddar scones

I love scones with clotted cream. With whipped butter. At afternoon tea in London. Heck, I even like the scones at my workplace cafeteria, but these scones took the cake.

For years I stuck to the same scone recipe I learned at Dish Cooking Studio,  one that included dried fruit and was served with mango whipped butter. And indeed it's a great recipe but this one is much more my style. I'm not a fan of chunks of fruit or raisins in my baked goods but the baked apple in this recipe would be missed if you were to leave it out.

I whipped these up in no time at all and they were scrumptious. My only regret is not making them smaller so I had more than 6 scones to look forward to. Or maybe I should have doubled the recipe. It's the perfect savoury-sweet combo, and not too dense like coffee-shop scones that sit like a rock in your stomach.

This recipe is from Bill Yosses' fantastic book The Perfect Finish, it's a must- have if you're a baker, it elevates the simplest recipes to something spectacular.

You can find the recipe for these scones here. I suppose it's a fitting blog post to confess that I've got another bun in the oven -  I'm expecting my second so my baking is much more sporadic these days as I'm conserving my energy for work, my toddler and keeping a household running. And unlike last time, I haven't lost my taste for chocolate this time around! This time, my sweet tooth is reigning supreme.

With that said, let's get back to the task at hand. I'll admit I had a couple of substitutions based purely on  laziness but these scones are flexible enough you can mix up the ingredients to suit your taste. I happen to think this recipe is near-perfect, so experiment only if you are confident!

Substitutions: I only had one apple, but I wouldn't have minded using the two. The recipe called for cutting each apple into sixteenths but I chopped my apple into half-inch chunks instead, purely out of preference for texture. Also, I didn't have white cheddar so I used grated sharp yellow cheddar instead.

Would I make this again? This will be my go-to scone recipe from now, so yes.

Grade: Five stars out of five. And you know well enough I don't give out five stars too easily.