These melt-in-your-mouth chocolate chip scones are tender and moist with deliciously crumbly edges. If you want to eat chocolate chip cookies for breakfast, this chocolate chip scone recipe is definitely the answer.
Let’s make chocolate chip scones! Or, as I like to call them, crispy chocolate chip cookies masquerading as scones. I swear, these really do taste like chocolate chip cookies. And if you’re craving brownies, here are my chocolate scones.
Scones are one of my favorite pastries. I use the same master scones recipe for a variety of flavors including blueberry scones, ham and cheese scones, cinnamon scones, apple cinnamon scones, lemon blueberry scones, and cranberry orange scones. If you find a base recipe you love, why look further? I do the same with my vanilla cupcakes. From that base recipe, I created chai latte cupcakes, confetti cupcakes, and even mimosa cupcakes. Sky’s the limit!
My careful scone formula promises the best flavor and texture. Using a handful of basic ingredients like flour, butter, and sugar, you can create a decadent breakfast pastry comparable to (or even better than!) most bakeries.
These Chocolate Chip Scones Have:
- Dozens of chocolate chips in each bite (like having chocolate chip cookies for breakfast!)
- Sweet crumbly edges
- Crunchy golden brown exterior
- Soft, moist, buttery centers
- Lots of brown sugar flavor
- A snow shower of powdered sugar on top!
Or you could even top with vanilla icing, extra chocolate chips, a swipe of honey butter, or a simple chocolate drizzle.
How to Make Chocolate Chip Scones
These chocolate chip scones are surprisingly quick and easy. First, mix the dry ingredients together. You need flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Second, cut cold butter into the dry ingredients. You can use a pastry cutter or 2 forks, like we do with pie crust, or your hands. A food processor works too, but it often overworks the scone dough. To avoid overly dense scones, work the dough as little as possible.
Next, whisk the wet ingredients together. You need heavy cream, brown sugar, 1 egg, and vanilla extract. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, add the chocolate chips, then gently mix together. Form the dough into a disc on the counter, then cut into 8 wedges. Before baking, brush the scones with heavy cream and sprinkle with coarse sugar. These extras add a bakery-style crunch and beautiful golden sheen. Delicious.
One of my tricks: To obtain a flaky center and a crumbly exterior, keep scone dough as cold as possible. I highly recommend chilling the shaped scones for at least 15 minutes prior to baking. You can even refrigerate overnight for a quick breakfast in the morning!
After that, bake the scones until golden brown.
Frozen Grated Butter
Frozen grated butter is key to chocolate chip scone success. As with pie crust, work cold butter into the dry ingredients. The cold butter coats the flour, which creates tons of flour coated butter crumbs. When the butter/flour crumbs melt as the scones bake, they release steam which creates all the delicious flakiness we love. The exterior becomes crumbly, crunchy, and crisp. Aka the best part about scones.
Refrigerated butter might melt in the dough as you work with it, but frozen butter will hold out until the oven. And the finer the pieces of cold butter, the less the scones spread and the quicker the butter mixes into the dry ingredients. Remember, you don’t want to over-work scone dough.
I recommend grating the frozen butter with a box grater.
The SECRET to Light-Textured Scones
For deliciously flaky and light-textured scones, avoid over-working the dough. My goodness, this is KEY! Use a pastry cutter for the cold butter instead of a food processor. Use your hands to pat the dough into a disc. The dough will be messy and crumblyโdon’t worry, that’s a good thing!
Video Tutorial
If you’re interested, I have a 5 minute video demonstrating the scone recipe. I’m making blueberry scones in this video, but the base recipe and process is exactly the same.
How to Freeze Scones
Two options here!
- Freeze Before Baking: Freeze scone dough wedges for 1 hour. Once relatively frozen, layer them in a freezer-friendly bag or container. Bake from frozen, adding a few minutes to the bake time in the recipe below. Or thaw overnight, then bake as directed.
- Freeze After Baking: Freeze the baked and cooled scones before topping with icing or confectioners’ sugar. I usually freeze in a freezer-friendly bag or container. Thaw on the counter or overnight in the refrigerator. Warm in the microwave for 30 seconds or on a baking sheet in a 300ยฐF (149ยฐC) oven for 10 minutes.
Chocolate Chip Scones
- Prep Time: 30 minutes
- Cook Time: 25 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour
- Yield: 8 large scones
- Category: Breakfast
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
These chocolate chip scones are crispy chocolate chip cookies in scone form! They’re buttery and moist with crisp crumbly edges and soft flaky centers. Read through the recipe before beginning. You can skip the chilling for 15 minutes prior to baking, but I highly recommend it to prevent the scones from over-spreading.
Ingredients
- 2 cups (250g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled), plus more for hands and work surface
- 2 and 1/2 teaspoonsย baking powder
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoonย salt
- 1/2 cup (8 Tbsp; 113g) unsalted butter, frozen
- 1/2 cup (120ml) heavy creamย (plus 2 Tbsp for brushing)
- 1/2 cup (100g) packed light or dark brown sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1 and 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 1 and 1/4 cups (225g) mini chocolate chips*
- optional: coarse sugar for sprinkling on top before baking
- optional: confectioners’ sugar for sifting on top after baking
Instructions
- Whisk flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt together in a large bowl. Grate the frozen butter using a box grater. Add it to the flour mixture and combine with a pastry cutter, two forks, or your fingers until the mixture comes together in pea-sized crumbs. See video above for a closer look at the texture. Place in the refrigerator or freezer as you mix the wet ingredients together.
- Whisk 1/2 cup heavy cream, brown sugar, the egg, and vanilla extract together in a small bowl. Drizzle over the flour mixture, add the chocolate chips, then mix together until everything appears moistened.
- Pour onto the counter and, with floured hands, work dough into a ball as best you can. Dough will be sticky. If it’s too sticky, add a little more flour. If it seems too dry, add 1-2 more Tablespoons heavy cream. Press into an 8-inch disc and, with a sharp knife or bench scraper, cut into 8 wedges.
- Brush scones with remaining heavy cream and for extra crunch, sprinkle with coarse sugar. (You can do this before or after refrigerating in the next step.)
- Place scones on a plate or lined baking sheet (if your fridge has space!) and refrigerate for at least 15 minutes.
- Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400ยฐF (204ยฐC).
- Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or silicone baking mat. After refrigerating, arrange scones 2-3 inches apart on the prepared baking sheet(s).
- Bake for 22-25 minutes or until golden brown around the edges and lightly browned on top. Remove from the oven and cool for a few minutes before enjoying. Dust with confectioners’ sugar if desired.
- Leftover scones keep well at room temperature for 2 days or in the refrigerator for 5 days.
Notes
- Freezing Instructions: See blog post above.
- Overnight Instructions: Prepare scones through step 4. Cover and refrigerate overnight. Continue with the recipe the following day.
- Special Tools (affiliate links): Glass Mixing Bowlsย |ย Box Graterย |ย Pastry Cutterย |ย Whisk |ย Silicone Spatulaย |ย Bench Scraperย |ย Baking Sheetย |ย Silicone Baking Matย orย Parchment Paperย |ย Pastry Brush
- Chocolate Chips: I prefer mini chocolate chips because you get more in every bite! Regular size is just fine, though you may want to increase the amount to 1 and 1/2 cups (270g).
- Over-spreading: Start with very cold scone dough. Expect some spread, but if the scones are over-spreading as they bake, remove from the oven and press back into its triangle shape (or whatever shape) using a rubber spatula.
Reader Comments and Reviews
Delicious! It was my first time making scones and they are SO good! Based on some reviews I baked less time for 18 minutes and baked some on a dark sheet pan and some on light with silicon mat. The ones on the dark pan did come out a bit darker. Loved the crunch! Another winning recipe from Sally!! Thank you!
I made these with Cup4Cup GF flour, baked for 19 minutes, and they were AMAZING. It is always nice to find a recipe that works well as a GF treat!
So glad this worked out for you, Jennifer!
Glad I read the reviews before making these. A lot or people said the baking time was too long and that they burned on the bottom so I stacked two cookie sheets to make sure the bottoms didnโt cook too fast and they turned out really good and not dry at all. Only thing I would change is the cinnamon.. Iโm going to skip that next time because to me it gave the scones a marzipan/ almond extract flavor for some reason.
Way too long at 20 minutes. Were so dry!
That means you probably did something wrong because mine were great!
Absolutely delicious scones. Family favorite. I have made it multiple times.
20 minutes is the perfect bakingtime. 22 minutes was definitely too dark.
Agreed that a bake time of 22 minutes at 400 is too much. Mine came out pretty much burnt on the bottom. I wish I knew the proper adjustmentโeither baking for less time or at a lower temperature.
Hi Em, I’m sorry to hear that, and am happy to help troubleshoot. What kind of baking sheet are you using–is it light-colored (silver) or dark? We’ve found that this can make a real difference with the bottoms of baked goods getting too dark. Also, are you using conventional bake setting on your oven, or a convection/fan setting?
Recipe was good except for the bake time. Mine got overbaked at 22 minutes
I have searched for over an hour for scone recipes that specifically call for pastry flour and cannot find many at all. One website said it can be substituted, cup for cup, for AP flour so can I do that with this recipe? Thanks for any help.
Hi Theresa! We’re sure you could, but we do recommend sticking with all purpose flour for our recipe.
The fine texture of these scones is amazing. I loved freezing/grating the butter. Thank you for a truly great recipe.
I made the chocolate chip scones. It was fantastic with a hint of cinnamon!
Love the chocolate chip scones. Would like to make them into peanut butter chocolate chip scones. Could I just add peanut butter and how much?
Hi Paula, We havenโt tested a recipe for peanut butter scones and it would take some additional recipe testing for us to give you a confident answer. You could
swap some of the chocolate chips for peanut butter chips and/or add a peanut butter drizzle on top. Let us know if you try anything!
Love your scones. Have made them often. Both sweet and savory. Always a hit. Want to make these, but the cherry/chocolate chip version.
My question is, can I use freeze dried cherries?
As always, thanks in advance.
Hi Sheila, we haven’t tested scones with freeze-dried cherries so are unsure, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. If you try it, let us know how it goes!
I made them today using the freeze dried cherries. Worked great and tasted amazing.
I chopped them up in smaller pieces and soaked them in some warm water. Drained them and patted dry. Mixed them with the chips and stuck it in the fridge.
I use freeze dried fruit as it works out so much easier and keeps all the juices from making the dough too wet. Blueberries, cherries, peaches and dried cranberries. The best scone recipe ever!!
Best scones ever! The first sentence says it all. I have never had a scone as good as this – ever. Delicious, not dry, and you make the recipe easy to follow, now I have no need to ever buy a scone again.
Just tried making it but it’s so sticky it was difficult to spread into a flan tray with baking paper.. How do I know if it’s too sticky? I’ve added a bit more flour but I don’t want it to dry out as well. Thanks!
Hi Chups, Often climate/humidity is to blame for sticky dough. It is okay to add extra flour! Did you watch the video in the post to see what the dough should look like when it comes together?
Hi Sally, your recipes are superb as always. I would love to bake choco chips scones but I don’t have all purpose flour, could I substitute it with wholemeal flour? Thank you.
Hi Magda, it’s best to stick with all purpose flour here, as whole wheat flour will dry out these scones.
Hi Sally, I love your recipes and am excited to try this one. Should the egg and heavy cream be room temperature or cold? Also, thanks for your videos. They have helped me become a better baker!
Hi Lainey, we recommend having them cold in this recipeโcold scone dough helps prevent over spreading. Hope you enjoy them!
Hi Sally. Can I use 0% plain Greek yogurt in place of heavy cream? Or 1/2 0% Greek yogurt and half almond milk?
Hi Valerie, you really need thick heavy cream (or buttermilk) for scones.
I just made these with my daughter. Followed the recipe to the T except that I took them out of the oven at 19 minutes but I think our oven runs warmer than most. They are outstanding! Such a wonderful recipe! Thanks Sally!
This is my all time favorite scone recipe! I make a batch of these and they’re basically gone by the next day. The cinnamon really makes them pop!
Hi! I was wondering if whole milk can be substituted for the heavy cream in this recipe?
Milk will be too thin – you really need thick heavy cream (or buttermilk) for scones.
so sorry, I just saw your comment about avoiding regular milk! apologies!!
Hi! Before freezing the raw dough, do put the heavy cream and sugar on or do you do that right before baking? thanks!
Hi Betty, you can leave that step until you’re ready to bake them. Enjoy!
Ugh what did I do wrong!? Followed the recipe perfectly but they came out flat
Hi Allie, flat scones are usually a result of warm butter in the dough. Make sure to keep it very cold before baking! Thanks so much for giving these scones a try.
The most important thing Iโve come to realize is to use frozen butter to grate. You should have all your dry and wet ingredients pre mixed (separate) so that when you combine the butter, flour and finally your wet ingredients, aim to have the dough out less than 5 minutes. Then pop them into the fridge to cool. I do at least thirty before baking and they are perfect every time and Iโm even doing them glute free! Love this recipe
Delicious, absolutely delicious!
What is the baking time of I want 16 mini scones instead of 8 large?
Hi Jess, for 16 mini scones, bake for 18-20 minutes or until lightly browned.
These were terrific! I made them for my family, and my sister honestly said that these were the best scones she’s ever had. I don’t have a lot of practice cooking, but this recipe was easy & delicious.
Can I substitute hard margarine for butter?