14/03/2021

Cheddar & Cream Cheese Scones with garlic & herbs

Name: Cheddar & Cream Cheese Scones with garlic & herbs
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 18 min
Total time: 38 min
Ingredients: 300 g self raising flour (plus extra for dusting); 10 g fresh chives (finely chopped); 1 level tsp baking powder; ½-1 tsp salt (amount depends on how salty your cream cheese is); ¼ tsp black pepper; 60 g butter (cold from the fridge); 150 g mature Cheddar cheese (grated and divided 125g/25g); 120 g cream cheese with garlic & herbs (roughly broken up); 140-175 ml milk, yogurt or buttermilk

Cheddar & Cream Cheese Scones with garlic & herbs are soft, fluffy and intensely flavoured.

Cream cheese makes the scones flaky and tender as well as adding flavour. I’ve used a garlic and herb cream cheese, although you could use a plain one if you prefer. Also in there is mature Cheddar cheese and fresh chives, giving the scones even more flavour.

Incredibly easy to make, there’s no re-rolling of scraps after cutting out. All you do is form the dough into a rough square then cut into twelve pieces with a knife.

Perfect for a snack, savoury afternoon tea, part of a picnic spread or lunchbox filler. You can even eat them alongside soups and casseroles.

Jump to Recipe

Cheese Scones are some of my favourite savoury snacks. Using mainly store cupboard and fridge staples, it’s so easy to whip up a batch for a snack, to pop in a lunchbox or for a picnic.

And lots of you seem to agree. My recipe for Very Cheesy Cheese Scones has consistently been one of my most popular on the blog.

What’s great about scones, whether savoury or sweet (see my Classic Sultana Scones for an example of the latter) is that they’re infinitely adaptable.

Swap in different cheeses, add a little ham or chorizo, different herbs and spices, and there’s no end to the variety of scones you can make.

One of those varieties I’ve recently discovered is scones containing cream cheese.

CREAM CHEESE

I was aware that cream cheese pastry is a thing. Often used in baked goods such as sweet or savoury turnovers, pies and the like, the cream cheese should give a very tender, flaky result. While I haven’t actually got around to making that pastry yet, I’d also read that cream cheese can have the same effect on scones.

So, being a lover of cheesy scones, this seemed the perfect trial recipe. For my first cream cheese scones, I used a cream cheese with chives and added fresh chives. And very good they were too. But, for the recipe I want to share today, I’ve upped the flavours even more by using a cream cheese with garlic and herbs.

By all means, use whichever cream cheese you like, flavoured or not. Other delicious dairy products in these scones include mature Cheddar cheese, butter, and your choice of yogurt, milk, buttermilk or whey.

I’ve chosen to use yogurt. I always have some of my Homemade Yogurt in the fridge and I think it makes scones fluffy and light.

But ordinary milk, buttermilk, or even the whey strained from yogurt or cheese making will work equally well.

As well as the herbs in the cream cheese, I like to add some fresh ones too.

In these Cheddar & Cream Cheese Scones I’ve used snipped chives again. But you could use parsley or, just coming into season as I write, wild garlic.

EASY CHEESY SCONES

As anyone knows who’s made them before, scones really are very easy.

In this case, you start off by stirring together self-raising flour, the herbs, baking powder, salt and pepper.

Next, you grate in cold butter. Dipping the block of butter in the flour mix now and again will stop it sticking to the grater.

Plenty of grated Cheddar goes in next, along with the cream cheese.

Aiming for a rough, crumbly result, you rub the butter and cream cheese into everything else.

Don’t worry that the mixture looks a bit lumpy. This will just add to the tempting flakiness of the finished scones.

Sufficient liquid (yogurt, milk, buttermilk or whey) is then added to bring the mixture into a soft dough.

Although I start by stirring in the liquid, once things start to come together, I think it’s better to switch to your hands. Different flours absorb different amounts of liquid and, in my experience, your hands are the best way of judging whether the dough is too wet or dry.

Start with just 125 ml of liquid, only adding more if needed.

Even in this, uncooked, state the dough will smell appetizingly of garlic, cheese and herbs.

ROLLING AND CUTTING OUT THE DOUGH

While I do like a classic British round scone, there’s a lot to be said for what I think of as the American method and this is what I’ve used for my Cheddar & Cream Cheese Scones.

Here, the dough is patted or rolled out into a square or circle and the scones cut with a knife into squares or triangles.

The advantage of this, besides being quicker as there’s no gathering up of the scraps and re-rolling, is that the dough is handled less. And handling the dough as little as possible is another tip for getting well risen, light and fluffy scones.

I find it convenient, as with my Easy Homemade Crackers and Beetroot Crackers, to roll out and cut the dough on baking paper.

This means I can lift the whole thing up and put it straight onto the baking tray. For me, a bonus is that clean-up of the worksurface is quicker too.

You’ll want to separate out the scones to give them space to rise, spread and get brown all over.

By the way, if you’re expert at rolling dough into a square, well done you. You’ll be able to divide it into 12 perfectly square scones.

I have no such skill, so my corners are rounded rather than ninety degrees. This means I have 8 square scones and 4 triangle ones, which is fine with me.

Using a little more of your chosen liquid such as yogurt, brush the tops of the scones. Finish with more Cheddar cheese sprinkled over.

The Cheddar & Cream Cheese Scones then go into your preheated oven.

BAKING & EATING CHEDDAR & CREAM CHEESE SCONES

The scones will take around 15 minutes, give or take 2 or 3, to get risen and beautifully golden.

If you can bear it, leave a few minutes so that they’re warm rather than finger and mouth burningly hot.

Then tear open (better than using a knife which squishes that tender fluffiness you’ve worked for) and breathe in the wonderful aroma of cheese, garlic and herbs.

These Cheddar & Cream Cheese Scones are so full of flavour, and rich from cream cheese, cheddar and butter, that I’ve eaten them just as they are.

But I do think a generous amount of proper butter, melting over still-warm scones, is one of life’s simple but comforting pleasures and just has to be done.

If you’ve some of the cream cheese left over, then spread some of that instead of (or as well as!) the butter for an even garlick-ier, even herbier kick.

I’m so pleased I tried adding cream cheese to a savoury scone recipe.

As well as adding a tanginess, I thought it did increase the flakiness of the dough too. And I’ll definitely be experimenting with cream cheese in other baked goods.

If you can stand not to eat all the scones straight away, they’ll be fine for a day or two but also freeze wonderfully well.

Being impatient, I reheat scones in a microwave for a few seconds. But do it in a low oven if you want to keep the exterior crusty.

Have you made these Cheddar & Cream Cheese Scones with garlic & herbs?

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4.8 from 5 votes