I have several other scone recipes on the blog, but amazingly none for fruit scones. Well, unless you count my Date and Wheaten Scones, which are delicious. And yes, I suppose dates do count as fruit. Anyway, I didn’t have a recipe for a plain scone with fruit. Until these Lemon and Sultana Scones.

It’s a simple scone recipe, very similar to my Plain Scones recipe, although this one also uses egg to bind the dough. The lemon flavor comes from grated lemon zest. It can be quite a subtle flavor, so I’d suggest using a large lemon. Or two small ones, depending on what you have to hand. I like to use a fine microplane style grater to zest my citrus, as finely grated zest works best here.

I use sultanas for these Lemon and Sultana Scones. But if you only have raisins, then don’t let the name stop you from using whatever is convenient. You could mix it up completely and use dried cranberries. Although I would really go against the recipe and switch to orange zest if I was using cranberries.

Not much baking advice with this recipe. I would recommend that you don’t mix the dough too much, as that can lead to heavier scones. Also, don’t roll it out too thinly. You want it to be 2-3cm thick when you cut it out. I used a 58mm scone cutter and got about 10 scones from this mixture. There was an eleventh scone, that wasn’t quite enough dough to cut out, so that one went on the baking sheet in a freeform shape. And I got to eat it as my ‘taster’, fresh from the oven.

I didn’t quite use all the liquid (eggs and milk) when mixing the scone dough. So, I’d suggest adding most, but not all of it at first, and then add more as needed. I used the leftover egg and milk to brush the tops of the scones. You don’t need to do this, but an egg wash on top can help to give the scones a golden look.

Now, if you wanted, you could add a lemon glaze to these scones after they have come out of the oven. It would increase the lemon flavor and would work well. Just mix some icing/powdered sugar with lemon juice until you have a thick paste, and drizzle over the top while they are still a little warm (but not straight from the oven). I might try that the next time I make these.

Scones are always best eaten on the day they are made. But a quick blast in the microwave always works to warm them through a little if they are a day or two old. These work just spread with butter. But are also great if you split them and spread with lemon curd, like my Easy Lemon Curd.