Triple Chocolate Scones Supreme

These crumbly, yet moist chocolate scones taste like warm brownies from the oven. I call them Triple Chocolate Scones Supreme because there is nothing NOT supreme about them. Every bite explodes with chocolate flavor. I love any excuse to eat chocolate for breakfast.

Course Dessert

Prep Time 25

Cook Time 25

Total Time 50

Servings Scones

Ingredients

1 and 2/3 cups 210g all-purpose flour (careful not to overmeasure)
1/3 cup 26g unsweetened cocoa powder (dutch process is OK)
1/2 cup 100g granulated sugar
2 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup 115g unsalted butter, frozen
1/2 cup + 1 Tablespoon 135ml heavy cream
1 large egg
1 and 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
6 ounces semi-sweet chocolate coarsely chopped1

Glaze + Topping

1 cup 120g confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 Tablespoons 30ml water (black coffee works too!)
4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate coarsely chopped1

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400F degrees. Adjust baking rack to the middle-low position. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. Set aside.
In a large bowl, whisk the flour, cocoa, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Grate the frozen butter (I used a box grater; a food processor also works - here is the one I own and love). Toss the grated butter into the flour mixture and combine it with a pastry cutter, your fingers, or two knives until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Set aside.
In a small bowl, whisk the cream, egg, and vanilla together. Drizzle it over the flour mixture and then toss the mixture together with a rubber spatula until everything appears moistened. Add more heavy cream, 1 teaspoon at a time, until it comes together, if needed. Slowly and gently fold in the chopped chocolate. Try your best to not overwork the dough at any point. Work the dough into a ball with floured hands (I flour mine with a mix of cocoa powder and flour) as best you can and transfer to the prepared baking sheet. Press into a neat 8″ disc and cut into 8 equal wedges with a very sharp knife. Separate the scones and line them on the baking sheet with a little space between each one.
Bake for 20-25 minutes or until cooked through; use a toothpick to check for doneness--a toothpick inserted will come out mostly clean. Remove scones from the oven and allow to cool for just a couple minutes. During this time (or while the scones are baking) prepare the glaze by whisking the confectioners' sugar, vanilla, and water together until smooth and thin. Dunk warm scones into the water and place on a wire rack with a baking sheet or paper towels underneath to catch the glaze as it drips down. The glaze will set after several minutes, but you can serve right away. Before serving, melt the 4 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate in the microwave in 15 second increments, stirring after each increment until melted. Drizzle over scones.
Make ahead tip: Scones are best enjoyed right away, though leftover scones keep well at room temperature for 2 extra days. Scones that have been glazed (or not glazed) freeze well, up to 3 months.

Notes

I use ghirardelli or baker's semi-sweet chocolate (both found in the baking aisle) for the chunks in the scones as well as the drizzle on top. 1 heaping cup semi-sweet chocolate chips may be substituted for the chopped chocolate in the scones. For the chocolate drizzle, I find melting chocolate chips to a thin enough drizzling consistency to be a little tough. So I always use pure chocolate for drizzling. The drizzle is optional.

Other Notes: plan to make that cranberry version this week – maybe use this recipe and sub blueberries for dried cranberries, soak some chopped dried apricots in orange juice to soften them up and add a little flavor. I’m getting way off topic. Scones make me chatty. Anyway, they also had an orange poppy seed scone, a triple chocolate scone, and a few others. I have always been the weirdo to choose fruit in baked goods over chocolate, but I couldn’t get the idea of a triple chocolate scone out of my head for a week.

Use my favorite basic scone recipe for today’s chocolate scones. The same recipe used for my blueberry scones, chocolate chip scones, and lemon poppy seed scones. To make them chocolate, I swap out some flour for unsweetened cocoa powder. Since cocoa can dry baked goods out, I add a little extra heavy cream. I loathe dry tasting scones. Besides all this, I add semi-sweet chocolate chunks, a little glaze (I’ll get to that in a minute), and melted chocolate on top.

The two most important ingredients in your scones today are the frozen butter and the heavy cream. These scones are cream scones, so heavy cream is a must. Both the cream and the butter are integral to the texture and taste of your finished chocolate scones. Cream makes them unbelievably moist and butter makes them tender.

A little more on the butter: I prefer a scone made with frozen butter compared to just cold butter. Why? It’s imperative to use extremely cold butter in my scone recipe because when the little crumbs of butter melt as the scone bakes, they release steam and create little pockets of air – this makes the scones a little airy on the inside while remaining flaky and crisp on the outside. Cold butter isn’t good enough, I prefer frozen. Simply place a stick of butter in the freezer for 30 minutes ahead of time. You may shred the frozen butter with a grater or process a couple times in your food processor.

glaze. I add a glaze coating to my chocolate scones. Why? Well, I find that chocolate scones can dry out pretty quickly. And in my recipe testing, I found that the best solution for this is to coat them in a very thin, very simple glaze made from water, confectioners’ sugar, and vanilla. I do not use milk because it makes the glaze a little too white. I was looking for a clear-ish type glaze– water is best and I even tried it with a little black coffee one time too. That was tasty!

Give the scones a nice dunk in this mixture while they are still warm and allow it to “set” on top as the scones cool. This adds a little extra sweetness to the not-overly-sweet scones themselves, while simultaneously keeping them quite moist.

And on top? A melted semi-sweet chocolate drizzle, which makes the scones completely ridiculous in the best way possible. These brownie-like scones are crumbly on the edges, moist in the centers, and exploding with chocolate. The bites with the melted semi-sweet chocolate chunks inside are the best. Haha, NO. All the bites are the best.