Tender and light, these one-bowl Donut Peach Scones are perfect for breakfast, brunch, or an afternoon tea break. Featuring donut peaches — regular peaches’ sweeter, paler, juicer, and smoother-skinned cousin — these scones are lightly spiced with cardamom, and sweetened with honey and coconut sugar. Serve them warm with butter, honey, or jam. Or slather them with our Sweet Cointreau Butter for an extra-delicious treat.
About Donut Peaches
Shaped like asymmetrical donuts, donut peaches are flatter and smaller than regular peaches. You can find them labelled a variety of different names including: doughnut, flat, pancake, Saturn, saucer, and white.
How Do Donut Peaches Compare to Regular Peaches?
Compared to regular peaches, donut peaches are sweeter and less acidic. Mother Earth News describes them as “sweeter, with almond overtones.”
Donut peaches are also smoother-skinned with less fuzz than regular peaches. For this Donut Peach Scone recipe that’s a win as it helps shorten the prep time, as you don’t need to peel them.
Comparing regular peaches to donut peaches
BUYING AND STORING DONUT PEACHES
When shopping for donut peaches look for unbroken, smooth skin. The peaches should be firm but not hard or green. Don’t squeeze them, as this bruises the fruit.
If your peaches are not quite ripe, keep them on the counter until they’re fully ripe and ready for baking.
Phil Tregunno
-Peach grower-
Storing peaches in the fridge is about the worst thing you can do.
If you have more peaches than you need for these Donut Peach Scones, and you can’t eat them quickly, then you can store them in the fridge for a day or two if necessary, but bring them back to room temperature for serving.
Donut Peach Scones with Sweet Cointreau Butter
Top Tips for Tender Scones
Visual Overview: Making Donut Peach Scones
Preheat the oven to 400F.
Start by chopping the peaches into about 1.5 inch size chunks. If you’re using raisins, you don’t need to chop them. If using dried mango or apricot, roughly chop them into bite-sized pieces. Set aside.
Prepare the peaches and dried fruit.
Cut the butter into even-sized cubes, about .5 inch in size. Using cold butter is one of the key’s to making tender scones.
Cubed butter
In a large bowl, add the flour, baking powder, coconut sugar, salt, and cardamom. Cake and pastry flour add another level of tenderness to these scones, but you can substitute with all purpose flour if that’s all you have. See the Recipe Card below for the amount, as you’ll need a little less.
Recipe Card
Add all the dry ingredients to a larger mixing bowl.
Add the butter to the bowl and incorporate it using your hands (or with a pastry blender if you want)
Add the butter
While you don’t want to leave large chunks of butter, having flattened pieces of butter will make the scones flakier. You want the final mixture to be crumbly looking, not perfectly blended.
Incorporate butter until crumbly
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Just stir enough to incorporate everything. If you handle the dough too much it will make the scones tough instead of tender.
Stir in the peaches and dried fruit.
Next, add in the milk and honey.
Add the milk and honey
Again, you want to stir just enough that everything is incorporated. The dough will be sticky and wet.
The final dough will be sticky and wet
The last step before baking your scones is to drop the batter onto a cookie sheet that’s been lined with parchment paper, or a Silpat sheet. Use about 1/3rd cup batter to make 12 smaller scones, or 1/2 cup batter for 9 large scones.
Now, sprinkle the scones generously with turbinado sugar, which is a larger-crystalled brown cane sugar. The turbinado will add a crunchy sweet texture when you bite into the scones.
Drop onto cookie sheet and sprinkle with sugar
Bake the scones for about 15 minutes, until cooked through and golden brown
Baked Donut Peach Scones
Related Recipes
Recipe Card
1-Bowl Donut Peach Scones
Ingredients
For the Peach Scones
- 3.25 cups cake and pastry flour (Or substitute with 3 cups of all purpose flour)
- .25 cup coconut sugar
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- .5 teaspoon salt
- .5 teaspoon cardamom
- 1.5 cups fresh peaches, in inch chunks
- .25 cup dried fruit (We've tested with golden raisins, dried apricot, and dried cantaloupe. Dried mango would also be good.)
- 1 cup milk
- .75 cups very cold butter, chopped into small cubes
- .25 cup honey
For the Sweet Cointreau Butter
- 6 tablespoons butter
- 2 tablespoons Cointreau (or substitute any kind of orange liqueur)
- 2 tablespoons coconut sugar (or substitute any kind of sugar)
Instructions
For the Peach Scones
- In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and cardamom.
- Add the butter to the bowl, and using your hands, mix the butter into the flour mixture. You don't want the butter completely integrated. There should be small chunks of flattened butter in the dough. This will help create tender, flaky scones.
- Stir in the peaches and dried fruit.
- Stir in the milk and honey until just combined. Don't overwork the dough.
- Scoop up about 1/3 cup of dough for smaller scones, or about 1/2 cup for larger scones. Drop the batter onto a parchment lined or Silpat lined baking sheet.
- Bake at 400F for about 15 minutes.
- Serve with Sweet Cointreau Butter.
For the Sweet Cointreau Butter
- Combine all of the ingredients in a small bowl. If using coconut sugar, it will not fully dissolve in the butter. That's OK.
Notes
Tips for Making the Scones
- Using cold butter will help to ensure tender, flaky scones.
- Don't worry if there are small chunks of butter in the dough. The dough should be shaggy-looking and sticky.
- Don't mix the dough any longer than necessary to incorporate the ingredients.
I love these scones! The butter Sylvia made to go with them was also great!!! Although i had mine with a hot chocolate, I’m sure tea would be good too. ?
Thank you!!
Omg so delicious the cardamom and peach combo, and so easy to make!!
Thank you, Martina! I hope you enjoy them!
Great job!
Thank you!
The Sweet Cointreau Butter is the best compliment to these yummy scones. I baked them about 10 minutes more because they weren’t quite done at 15 min. I will make them again. Delicious!!
Hi Louise – Thank you so much for taking the time to comment. And yes, that butter is awesome, isn’t it?