Recipe: Yogurt helps keep these baked goodies moist and fluffy
![]() (Photos: Kathy Morrison) |
Most Sundays I bake something to go with coffee and the larger paper. Scones are part of that repertoire, even though so many scone recipes result in heavy, crumbly, over-glazed wedges. However, searching for something different a few years ago, I found a recipe that uses yogurt to lighten and moisten the end result.
Since then I’ve played around with the ingredients quite a bit and found that using citrus in it is my favorite variation. Lemons are great, but pretty common in scones. Why aren’t limes used more? They’re in season now, too. Well, the results below are my answer to that.
I’ve made this recipe a couple of times this winter. In one I relied on the easy-to-find Mexican green limes folks buy for guacamole and margaritas. Another used some sweet limes I ran across at the farmers market a few weeks ago. These yellow citrus fruits ( Citrus limettioides ) look more like Meyer lemons, are really juicy, and have a sweet floral note I’d never tasted before in citrus. If you can find some, try them -- they’re quite wonderful.
One more note: This recipe adapts well to mix-ins, as long as you don’t overdo it. The scones are fluffy, almost like biscuits, and you want to add a little texture without weighing them down.
Fluffy lime scones
Makes 8 large wedges or 12 smaller ones
![]() I used a tart lime and unsweetened shredded
coconut in the most recent version of this recipe |
Ingredients:
Zest from 1 lime
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
Optional mix-in: 2 tablespoons poppy seeds OR 3 tablespoons unsweetened shredded coconut OR ¼ cup finely chopped dried cherries
5 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch chunks
1 egg
1 cup plain low-fat or whole milk yogurt
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ½ teaspoons fresh lime juice
Glaze:
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
¼ cup powdered sugar
Instructions:
Heat oven to 400 degrees F.
Zest the lime and stir the zest into the flour in a large bowl. Add the baking powder, salt, sugar and any mix-in that you’re using. Using a pastry blender or two knives, cut in the butter until the mixture looks fairly evenly bumpy and the butter chunks are about the size of peas. (A few slightly larger ones are OK.)
Cut the zested lime in half and juice both halves. Set juice aside for now.
In a medium bowl or large measuring cup, beat the egg and the yogurt together with a fork. Blend in the vanilla extract and 1 ½ teaspoons of fresh lime juice.
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Blend the yogurt mixture into the flour mixture until all the flour is incorporated but the dough still looks somewhat shaggy. Don’t overmix the dough.
On a floured pastry cloth, turn out the dough and knead it gently eight times, working it into a 1-inch-high round. Dip a large sharp knife in flour and cut the round into 8 or 12 even wedges.
Gently transfer wedges to a parchment-lined insulated cookie sheet (or on top of two regular cookie sheets that fit together). The wedges can be positioned in a round that will bake together, or separated to form more defined edges.
Bake the scones 20 minutes or until they are fully golden brown. Remove the pan to a cooling rack. Mix the glaze ingredients together and drizzle the glaze over the still-warm scones.
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Food in My Back Yard Series
May 6: Maintain soil moisture with mulch for garden success
April 29: What's (already) wrong with my tomato plants?
April 22: Should you stock up on fertilizer? (Yes!)
April 15: Grow culinary herbs in containers
April 8: When to plant summer vegetables
April 1: Don't be fooled by these garden myths
March 25: Fertilizer tips: How to 'feed' your vegetables for healthy growth
March 18: Time to give vegetable seedlings some more space
March 11: Ways to win the fight against weeds
March 4: Potatoes from the garden
Feb. 25: Plant a fruit tree now -- for later
Feb. 18: How to squeeze more food into less space
Feb. 11: When to plant? Consider staggering your transplants
Feb. 4: Starting in seed starting
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Garden Checklist for week of May 11
Make the most of the lower temperatures early in the week. We’ll be back in the 80s by Thursday.
* Plant, plant, plant! It’s prime planting season in the Sacramento area. Time to set out those tomato transplants along with peppers and eggplants. Pinch off any flowers on new transplants to make them concentrate on establishing roots instead of setting premature fruit.
* Direct-seed melons, cucumbers, summer squash, corn, radishes, pumpkins and annual herbs such as basil.
* Harvest cabbage, lettuce, peas and green onions.
* In the flower garden, direct-seed sunflowers, cosmos, salvia, zinnias, marigolds, celosia and asters. (You also can transplant seedlings for many of the same flowers.)
* Plant dahlia tubers.
* Transplant petunias, marigolds and perennial flowers such as astilbe, columbine, coneflowers, coreopsis, dahlias, rudbeckia and verbena.
* Keep an eye out for slugs, snails, earwigs and aphids that want to dine on tender new growth.
* Feed summer bloomers with a balanced fertilizer.
* For continued bloom, cut off spent flowers on roses as well as other flowering plants.
* Add mulch to the garden to maintain moisture. Mulch also cuts down on weeds. But don’t let it mound around the stems or trunks of trees or shrubs. Leave about a 6-inch-to-1-foot circle to avoid crown rot or other problems.
* Remember to weed! Pull those nasties before they set seed.
* Water early in the day and keep seedlings evenly moist.