Blueberry scones

• ½ cup infused butter

  Set your infusion strength above and this splits into infused and plain butter to hit whatever dose you want.

• 2 cupsall-purpose flour
• ⅓ cupgranulated sugar
• 1 tbspbaking powder
• ½ tspfine salt
• ¾ cupheavy cream — cold, plus a little for brushing
• 1large egg — cold
• 1 tspvanilla extract
• 1 cupblueberries — fresh, or frozen and used straight from the freezer
• coarse sugar — for the tops

Method

1. 01

   Cube the infused butter and put it back in the refrigerator while you measure everything else. Infusion changes nothing about how cold butter works in a scone — it melts, sets and shatters on the same schedule as plain butter, so the technique here is the ordinary one and the cold is still the whole point.

2. 02

   Whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a wide bowl. Chill the bowl too if your kitchen is warm.

3. 03

   Cut the cold butter into the dry ingredients with your fingertips or a pastry blender until the largest pieces are the size of peas. Those pieces turn to steam in the oven and push the layers apart; butter worked in until smooth gives you a cakey scone instead.

4. 04

   Whisk the cream, egg and vanilla together and pour them in. Stir with a fork only until a shaggy dough forms, then fold in the blueberries. Frozen berries go in frozen — thawed ones bleed and streak.

5. 05

   Turn the dough onto a floured counter, pat it into a rough rectangle, fold it in thirds like a letter, and repeat once. Those two folds build the flat layers that peel apart. Any more and the butter warms and smears.

6. 06

   Pat to a 1-inch-thick disk and cut 8 equal wedges. Cut straight down without twisting the knife, and check that the wedges look the same size — a scone half again as big as its neighbor is half again the dose.

7. 07

   Freeze the cut scones on the sheet for 15 minutes. Going into a hot oven cold is what makes them rise straight up instead of spreading sideways.

   15 min

8. 08

   Brush with cream, scatter coarse sugar over the tops and bake at 400 °F until golden at the edges and set in the center.

   400 °F · 20 min

9. 09

   Cool on a rack. They are best the day they are made; freeze extras cut and unbaked, and bake them from frozen with a few extra minutes.