Recipe: Chili Cheese Scones
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For this recipe, I partnered with Cabot Creamery to create my version of a baked goodie that I think gets totally overlooked: savory scones! I feel like sweet scones get all the love, but as a diehard member of Team Savory for life, what I like about savory scones is that they can be such a satisfying handheld snack or a way to round out a real meal.
These scones are filled with a combo of green chilies, scallions, black pepper, and lots of high quality Cabot Vermont Sharp Cheddar. The inspiration for this flavor grouping comes from Indian-style chili cheese toast, which I first experienced at a Bombay-inspired restaurant in London called Dishoom. There, the pairing of chili cheese toast and eggs is called Eggs Kejriwal. I’ll still go to Dishoom whenever I’m in London, but at home, I was happy to find it was easy to replicate the chili cheese toast and was blown away by how good the simple combo of chopped green chilies, scallions, black pepper, and melted cheddar tasted together. It really is an example of the whole being more than just the sum of its parts and I think a lot of credit can be given to the power of a high-quality sharp white cheddar, when it is all gooey and melty, for bringing everything together.
So when Cabot Creamery asked me to come up with a recipe to show off one of their wonderful cheddars, I thought it would be tasty to put the flavors of one of my favorite toasts into the lovely portable format of a scone. But despite the inspiration coming from London, these aren’t going to be the dry, crumbly, or bland scones you might get with an afternoon tea service. These are flavor-packed American style scones and they are super tender and light!
I opted to use Cabot Vermont Sharp Cheddar for this recipe, which has such a nice bold sharp cheddar taste. Cabot is a co-operative owned by farm families throughout New England & New York and 100% of profits go back to the farmers, which I think is so cool for a brand that is so widely distributed. They are also the world’s first dairy co-op to get a B Corp certification. This particular cheese offering from them has a creamy texture and buttery richness to it, and is equally as good for just snacking on alone as it is getting baked into scones—which made it really hard for me to resist eating it while I was prepping the ingredients to shoot this recipe.
These scones are nice and cheesy, with a little bit of kick from the chilies, and a unique spiced undertone from the coriander seeds and black pepper. I hope you’ll give them a try!
What you need to know about the key ingredients for this Chili Cheese Scone recipe:
Butter: Freezing the butter and then grating it is my go-to technique for any sort of baked pastry that I want to be airy and flakey. No one wants overly-dense, hard scones. In contrast, the frozen butter, and keeping everything as cold as possible in general, allows for the creation of steam inside the scones as they bake, which form air pockets that keep the texture light. I used Cabot Salted Butter for this recipe to add an extra note of rich savoriness.
Cheddar: The cheddar is really the star of these cheesy scones! I went for the Cabot Vermont Sharp Cheddar, which I think has a great classic sharp cheddar taste that really holds up nicely mixed into these scones. However, I think that Cabot Creamery’s Seriously Sharp Cheddar would also be great here. Be sure to grab one of their cheese bars and grate it fresh for this recipe.
Green Chilies: The green chilies are what give the scones a nice little spicy kick. I used a mixture of jalapenos and serranos here (2 very large jalapenos and 1 long serrano) but you could also choose one or the other. I removed the pith and seeds from the jalapenos because I don’t care for the texture but kept it all in for the thinner serrano and this brought a noticeable amount of heat to the scones. If you remove all the pith, the scones will be much milder.
Scallions: Chopped scallions add a nice savory and aromatic flavor to the scones. They get sweeter when the scones are baked and taste so good with the cheddar!
Black Pepper: This adds a zingy spiced component to the scones. Please do not use the ground pepper that comes out of a store-bought spice jar. Whole black peppercorns and a pepper mill on a coarser setting, and subsequently nice freshly-cracked pepper, is what will give you the flavor impact you want.
Coriander Seeds: Sometimes when I make chili cheese toast, I also include cilantro, or coriander. For my scones, I opted to include coriander seeds because I think they bring such a great mysterious and complex spice flavor without adding any extra spicy heat. I measured out the whole seeds first, then toasted them in a dry pan until they became fragrant, then pulsed them a couple of times in a spice grinder. If you have a mortar and pestle that would be even better. You want to crush them up and get them to release their aroma but you don’t need a fine powder.
A couple of other techniques to get the best scones:
Like I mentioned before, keeping everything cold is what gives you scones that are tender and airy instead of dense and firm. Popping the scones in the freezer while you wait for your oven to heat up will help the scones poof up instead of spreading out.
Creating letterfolds with the dough before cutting out the scones is what gives them those nice layers similar to an American style biscuit. You can definitely just gather the dough together and cut out the scones right away, but this extra step of flattening it out and folding the slab of dough a few times is a quick trick that makes them extra special.
How to Make Chili Cheese Scones
(Makes 8 scones)
Ingredients
2 cups AP flour, plus extra for dusting
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp freshly cracked black pepper
1 tbsp whole coriander seeds, toasted and then coarsely ground
2/3 cup heavy cream
1 egg
6 oz Cabot Vermont Sharp Cheddar, grated
1/2 packed cup scallions, chopped
1/2 cup jalapeno or serrano peppers, cut into 1/8” dice (see note*)
1/2 cup (1 stick) Cabot Salted Butter, frozen
1 tbsp Cabot Salted Butter, melted
Cilantro leaves, for decoration (optional)
Notes
* You can control the level of spicy heat in the scones by how much of the pith you choose to include. The majority of a chili pepper’s heat comes from the pith.
Procedure
Combine the flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, pepper, and ground coriander seed in a large mixing bowl and whisk together.
Set aside a few pinches of the grated Cabot Vermont Sharp Cheddar for topping off the scones later.
Into the dry ingredients, stir in the rest of the cheddar, plus the chopped scallions and chilies.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the heavy cream and egg.
Working quickly with cold hands, grate the stick of Cabot Salted Butter into the dry ingredient mixture, tossing together the ingredients along the way to ensure even distribution.
Drizzle in about one-third of the wet ingredients. Incorporate gently with some of the dry ingredients. Continue gradually incorporating the wet and dry ingredients together, taking care to not overstir. (Mixture can be clumpy and uneven.)
Dump the mixture onto a work surface and gently press together with your hands until it all sticks together. Lightly flour a work surface, then shape the dough into a rough rectangle, about 6x9. Lightly flour the surface of the dough, then fold down the top third and fold up the bottom third (like you would fold a letter). Flip and rotate 90 degrees and repeat the shaping, rolling, and folding sequence. Flip and rotate again, then do the sequence one more time, for 3 sets of letter folds total.
Then, fold the dough in half and shape it into a flat circle, about 7-8 inches in diameter. Cut the dough into 8 equal wedges. Transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet and place in the freezer for 15 minutes.
In the meantime, place an oven rack one-third from the top of the oven and preheat oven to 400°F.
Brush melted butter on the tops of the chilled biscuits. Sprinkle remaining cheddar on top. If desired, decorate with fresh cilantro leaves.
Bake for 25–27 minutes, or until tops begin to get golden.
Thank you so much to Cabot Creamery for sponsoring this recipe! Visit their website to find out where you can get their delicious cheeses, such as their naturally-aged cheddars, near you!