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Layered Pumpkin Chocolate Scones

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These buttery, flaky Layered Pumpkin Chocolate Scones are the official scone of Halloween with alternating layers of pumpkin and black cocoa dough.

  • Total Time: 48 minutes
  • Yield: about 18 scones

Ingredients

  • 3.5 cups all purpose flour
  • 2.5 teaspoons baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon kosher salt
  • 2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
  • 1/2 cup light brown sugar
  • 8 ounces butter (2 standard sticks), grated on large holes of box grater
  • 1 cup heavy cream
  • ¾ cup canned pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
  • 2 tablespoons molasses
  • 1 egg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/4 cup black cocoa powder

For topping

  • 1 egg mixed with one tablespoon water
  • a couple tablespoons granulated sugar

Instructions

TO PREPARE THE SCONES:

  1. In a 2 cup or larger glass measuring cup, combine wet ingredients - cream, pumpkin, molasses, egg, and vanilla. Whisk to combine thoroughly and set aside.
  2. In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, pumpkin pie spice, and sugar. Mix well, make sure to break up any brown sugar clumps if you find any. Add grated butter and mix so that all butter pieces are coated in flour.
  3. Press the mixture into an even thickness in the bowl and draw a line down the middle with your finger. Remove half of dry mixture to another mixing bowl. 
  4. Add 1/4 cup black cocoa to one of the bowls.
  5. Slowly drizzle about 1/2 of the wet mixture over the plain dry mixture in one bowl, tossing and stirring with a fork as you pour. Make sure to stir up from the bottom so you don't end up with a bunch of dry flour hiding. Repeat this process with the cocoa powder bowl. You are looking for a shaggy, mostly moistened dough with a few dry bits. If you feel your dough is getting too wet, stop adding the wet mixture. 
  6. Use a flexible dough scraper or your hands to push and squeeze the dough together in the bowl. You don't want to knead it, but you do want to bring it together. Dump one dough at a time onto a lightly floured surface and squeeze and pat it together into a rectangle of about 1 inch thickness. If you do have some dry flour left, just press it into the dough now - it will get incorporated as we are layering the doughs. Alternatively, if your dough is sticky, use flour as needed to prevent too much stickiness.
  7. Make sure to check out the step-by-step photos above in the blog post for this part: Once you have your two dough rectangles, one orange and one cocoa, divide each one in half so that you have 4 square-ish pieces of dough. Place one orange on top of one cocoa, and then one cocoa on top of the remaining orange. Gently pat each one down to about the original thickness. Repeat the dividing and stacking once more.
  8. Press or roll each portion of dough into a rectangle. The size of the rectangle doesn't matter - you are looking for a thickness of about 1.5 inches.
  9. Place the dough in the freezer for about 30 minutes to firm up. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F and clean up your mess while the dough freezes.
  10. After 30 minutes, remove from freezer and cut scones with a 3 inch biscuit cutter. Stack and press the scraps until you've used all of the dough. The scones made from scraps will be a lot more wild and marbly but still delicious and I think they're really fun. I actually like to use a smaller biscuit cutter for the scrap scones just for some variety and it just makes it easier to get all the dough used up.
  11. Place scones about 1/2 inch apart on parchment lined baking tray, brush tops with beaten egg and sprinkle lightly with sugar.
  12.  Bake for 18-20 minutes in preheated oven.

Notes

If you don't want to grate the butter or don't have a box grater you can cube the butter and cut it into the dry mixture with a fork, your fingers, or a pastry cutter.

I find it best to work with the plain pumpkin dough first in steps 5 and 6 so you don't get cocoa dough mixed with pumpkin dough.

  • Author: anita | wild thistle kitchen
  • Prep Time: 30 minutes plus chilling
  • Cook Time: 18 minutes
  • Category: scones, breakfast, dessert, brunch
  • Method: baking
  • Cuisine: American