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These lemon cranberry scones are one of the most popular scones recipes on my entire website! The tart flavours of lemon in a sweet based scone that has zippy cranberries in it is perfection!
Lemon Cranberry Scones
The secret to making the best scones is my Best Scones Ever recipe, bar none. Those scones are the flakiest, most decadent buttery scones that you will ever eat. I had a thought however…..what if I made lemon scones?
How to Make Lemon Scones
These are my newest version of my scones, and our favorite so far. Of course lemon makes everything better, but I had a bag of dried cranberries in my cupboard and decided to use them instead of raisins, and the scones are so flavorful it’s amazing.
- Mix the baking soda and the sour cream together. Whisk all your dry ingredients together in a large bowl.
- Add your butter and cut in until it’s crumbly.
- Take your lemon and grate the peel off of it into the flour mixture.
It should look like this, not completely white but you got most of the peel off.
Cut your lemon in half, and squeeze all the juice out, picking out the seeds that inevitably fall into it. They always do, I haven’t mastered juicing a lemon and not having all the seeds end up in the juice too.
You should get around this much, almost a 1/4 cup of lemon juice.
Add in enough milk to bring it to 1/3 of a cup. Don’t worry if the milk curdles.
Mix the sour cream, milk and egg into the dry ingredients.
Once it’s mixed a bit, add in the cranberries.
Divide into three balls, then flatten into 6 inch disks. Cut each piece into 6 triangles.
Bake in a 350 degree oven and bake them until they are golden brown, from 15-20 minutes depending on your oven, and be prepared for these to be your new favorite scone!
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Lemon Cranberry Scones
- Prep Time
- 10 minutes
- Cook Time
- 15 minutes
- Total Time
- 25 minutes
- Course
- Breakfast
- Cuisine
- Scones
- Servings
- 18
- Calories
- 277
- Author
- Karlynn Johnston
Ingredients
- 2/3 cup sour cream
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 4 cups flour
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 cup dried cranberries, sweetened
- 1 cup butter
- 1 lemon
- 1 egg
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Kick the tires & light the fires to 350 degrees.
- Mix the baking soda and the sour cream together.
- Whisk all your dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Add your butter and cut in until it's crumbly.
- Take your lemon and grate the peel off of it into the flour mixture.
- Cut your lemon in half, and squeeze all the juice out, picking out the seeds that inevitably fall into it. They always do, I haven't mastered juicing a lemon and not having all the seeds end up in the juice too. You should get almost a 1/4 cup of lemon juice.
- Add in enough milk to bring it to 1/3 of a cup. Don't worry if the milk curdles.
- Mix the sour cream, milk and egg into the dry ingredients. Once it's mixed a bit, add in the cranberries. Divide into three balls, then flatten into 6 inch disks. Cut each piece into 6 triangles.
- Bake in a 350 degree oven and bake them until they are golden brown, from 15-20 minutes depending on your oven.
Nutrition Information
All calories and info are based on a third party calculator and are only an estimate. Actual nutritional info will vary with brands used, your measuring methods, portion sizes and more.
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Please rate this recipe in the comments below to help out your fellow cooks!
Marina says
I have been making these scones for many years! They are the absolute best! Everyone who tries them loves them too. I follow the recipe exactly…no need to change a thing! Thank you!
Louise says
I found the dough a bit too dry/crumbly therefore difficult to make into 6″ disks so I wound up adding a tad more milk (actually I used 1/2 & 1/2 cream as I only had almond milk), and this did the trick. Other than that the results were very yummy!
Shelly Redmond says
I buy this great Lemon Cranberry scones from a bakery in a local Market which I love! I’ve tried to replicate these scones without success until I tried your recipe! Its perfect and they are equal if not even better than the ones I was buying!
Delicious
Thanks for sharing!
Helen Gill says
The text says to cut up the butter into the flour. The list of ingredients lists margarine, NOT BUTTER. Which is it?
Jesse says
Love this!!! I’ve made this a couple of times already and they always turn out perfect. After making this the first time and loving it, I tried another scones recipe with strawberries by someone else, and was so disappointed with the outcome. The batter was so wet I had to add almost 1 more cup of flour to it and the finish product was yuk.
This recipe is perfect!!! My kids love them and my friend who loves scones, requests for me to bake them. Thank you so much! I will make this my basis for scones always!
Heidi says
This is by far my favourite scone recipe! I’ve used it multiple times with different fruit and they’ve all turned out divine. Thank you so much for posting it!
Heather says
Hi there, Karlynn,
I just discovered this delicious recipe after many years of baking and I noticed your comment about lemons and your” trouble” with squeezing and seeds. {These are delicious and perfect scones, may I first say! The best over many years of searching!} I have made several batches over the last few days even, and my family is asking ” when next?”
When I squeeze lemons, where possible, I use a loose tea strainer-the kind you can lay over a tea cup. I grate the lemon first for the rind, then I roll that lemon, or lemons lightly on the counter so the juice comes out more easily, cut it in half, then squeeze it over the strainer into the measuring cup or just a cup. I know that I can go through chasing the pits with a fork and getting rid of them that way, but this is easier and generally works well. Hope this helps.. PS. My husband has “offered” to be the cleaner- upper -when I bake these scones!