The Best Easy Scone Recipe

I actually don’t like scones. At least I don’t like any store bought or bakery scones that I’ve ever tried. They are all dry and crumbly and I don’t really get the point of them. But certain members of my family like them, so I try to find ways to cook things at home that they like.

I’ve tried a number of scone recipes over the decades that seemed to me basically like the crumbly bakery scones I don’t like - but then I found this recipe. These are not your crumbly commercial scones! They are really buttery, and flakey, and moist. They are more like a sweet buttery biscuit than a scone really, and I think they are just right.

These are huge hit with my family. For years I made them for Christmas morning, you can easily make the dough ahead of time and refrigerate or freeze, and then bake them when you are ready for a fresh warm treat. I had actually forgotten about this recipe for a few years, until a child recently asked me if we could make some vanilla scones like the ones she loves at Starbucks.

Scroll down for the recipe. This is my adaptation from a decades old bed & breakfast cookbook that I acquired somewhere along the line.

Below is the recipe. If you click the image you will get a printable version.

Click the image for printable recipe

Starbucks Petite Vanilla Scone copycat

One of my kids loves the little vanilla scones that you can get at Starbucks. They are mini scones with a nice vanilla bean icing.

You can copycat those using this recipe!

We make a vanilla version of these scones without any nuts or fruit, and divide the dough into 8 pieces instead of four so that they nice and small.

Roll each piece out into a circle and cut into wedges for the petite scone size.

They’ll take a few minutes less to bake.

Then scrape a vanilla bean into a simple icing to drizzle over the top. Just like the ones at Starbucks, only fresher. My kids love them this way.