Carrot Cake Scones With Cream Cheese Glaze Recipe

This recipe delivers a perfect fusion of the simplicity of scones and the decadence of carrot cake. Soft, crumbly, and infused with warm spices, sweet carrot, plump raisins, and crunchy pecans, these scones are perfect with a cup of coffee or tea as a quick way to start your morning or as a snack to keep a dreary afternoon at bay.

These scones boast all of your favorite carrot cake flavors, from the spices to the texture-adding mix-ins of raisins and pecans, but no carrot cake is complete without cream cheese frosting. That sweet, tart, creamy icing makes the perfect counterpoint to the warm flavors of the cake. In this recipe, we make a simple glaze using cream cheese, milk, vanilla, and powdered sugar, which fills that role perfectly and turns an already wonderful scone into something spectacular.

Whether you're baking up something for a special brunch or simply preparing quick breakfasts for the week ahead, these carrot cake scones with cream cheese glaze are sure to delight. After all, who doesn't wish that they could have cake for breakfast?

For this recipe, you will need all-purpose flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, ground ginger, ground nutmeg, ground cloves, ground cinnamon, chopped pecans, raisins, and grated carrots. These make up your dry ingredients for the scones. After that, you will need some nice, cold butter straight out of the refrigerator. As for wet ingredients, you'll need heavy cream and an egg. That will do you for the scones themselves, but for the icing, you'll also need cream cheese, milk, vanilla extract, and powdered sugar. Once you've brought all of these ingredients together, you're ready to start baking.

Preheat the oven to 400 F.

In a large mixing bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, pecans, raisins, and grated carrot.

Chop the cold butter into pea-sized pieces.

Stir the chopped butter into the dry ingredients.

In a small bowl, beat together the egg and heavy cream.

Pour the egg and cream into the mixing bowl with the dry ingredients and stir together until a rough dough forms.

Form the dough into a thick disc about 6 inches across.

Slice the dough radially into 8 even pieces.

Transfer the scones to a baking sheet and bake for 20 minutes, or until the scones are nicely browned. Once baked, remove and allow to cool.

To make the glaze, begin by adding the cream cheese, powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla extract to a mixing bowl.

Using a fork, briefly mash the cream cheese to break it apart.

Using an electric mixer or whisk, beat the cream cheese mixture until it is smooth and well-combined, around 2 minutes.

Once the scones have cooled, top with the glaze and serve immediately.

With eight scones in a recipe, there's a pretty good chance that you will have some leftovers. But, what is the best method for storing leftover scones, and how long do they keep? First and foremost, if you are expecting to have leftovers, don't glaze all of the scones at once. Because of the dairy in the glaze, it will not keep at room temperature like the scones will. Glaze only as many as you plan to eat in that first sitting and store the extra glaze in the refrigerator.

As far as the scones themselves go, like many baked goods, they have a decent shelf-life when stored at room temperature. Placed in an airtight container with a paper towel for excess moisture, they will keep at room temperature just fine for up to four days, though they may begin to turn dry and crumbly after a couple of days.

Alternatively, you can store the leftover scones in tin foil for up to two days at room temperature. While storing your extras in this manner will reduce their longevity, the tin foil is great for reheating leftover scones.

These scones, just like traditional carrot cake, are open to customization.Our suggestion is to make this recipe the first time according to the directions, then next time branch out and try a bit of experimentation. While carrot cake is known for its bright orange namesake vegetable, at its core it is a spice cake, and spice cakes are a great medium for exploration.

In these scones, we use ginger, nutmeg, clove, and cinnamon to fill out the spice tray, but this is a great place to experiment. Allspice would fit in great, cardamom would add some interesting, citrusy, peppery notes, and while we're talking about it, you could even take these scones in a chai-spiced direction with the addition of spices like black pepper and star anise.

Another favorite addition to carrot cake is pineapple. Pineapple adds moisture, so be sure that you don't add too much. A little bit adds a nice touch of sweetness and acidity, as well as a pleasing touch of tropical aroma. If you like a bit of booze in your baked goods, you could also try rum-soaked raisins in your carrot cake scones. Just soak the raisins in your favorite rum for a few hours before baking. They will add moisture and a little hint of rum to the finished product.