The Corn-Cherry Scone Recipe Kids Love

By Nicholas Day

On cooking for children, and with children, and despite children. Also, occasionally, on top of.

Today: The wholesome, Official Cooperative Bakery Pastry of the Bay Area—and why you should add it to your regular breakfast rotation.

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A decade ago, I had a corn-cherry scone at the Cheese Board in Berkeley. It was delicious. A week later, I had a corn-cherry scone at an Arizmendi bakery in San Francisco. It was delicious. I think of the corn-cherry scone as the Official Cooperative Bakery Pastry of the Bay Area. That may not be a state-recognized designation, though.

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It is the perfect morning pastry, or at least the perfect morning pastry from a decade ago—an innocent time—back before new pastries came with trademarks and formerly obscure delicacies like kouign amann started showing up in the frozen aisle at Trader Joe’s. As far as I can tell, the morning pastry of our new era is designed to blow out all your neural circuits immediately after coffee has restored them.

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I like kouign amann as much as the next dissolute hedonist, but sometimes a scone will do.

The Official Cooperative Bakery Pastry of the Bay Area is uncomplicated; you can make it with children, even your children. It is just sweet enough, and just savory enough that the sweetness of dried cherries is a perfect counterpoint. It is also just gritty enough. Grittiness is not a subject that gets a lot of play in baking cookbooks—it gets more play in developmental psychology papers—but medium-grind cornmeal is perfect here. It gives the scone texture and wholesomeness; it makes the scone feel earned. Did you earn it? Probably not. (Can you still make it with fine cornmeal? Yes, you can.)

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Fair warning: It is extremely crumbly, and if you are eating with people whose fine motor control is somewhat uncontrolled, your floor will need to be swept afterward. But crumbs are an inevitable consequence of enthusiasm. And your floor needed to be swept anyway. Doesn’t it look better now?

Cornmeal-Cherry Scones

Makes 14 scones

2 cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon kosher salt
2/3 cup sugar
1 ½ cups cornmeal (medium grind, but fine is fine too)
1 cup cold unsalted butter (2 sticks), cut into 1-inch pieces
¾ cup dried sweet cherries
1 cup buttermilk

1. Heat the oven to 425° F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

2. In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, and baking powder. Add the salt, sugar, and cornmeal and mix together.

3. With a pastry cutter or a couple of butter knives, cut the butter into the flour mixture until it is the size of peas. Mix in the cherries, and then make a well in the center and pour in the buttermilk. Mix briefly, just until the dough comes together; it should be stiff and still a little sticky. (Don’t worry about getting every last bit of flour.) Let rest for 5 minutes.

4. Form the dough into balls about 2 inches in diameter and place them on the baking sheets a couple of inches apart. Place in the oven and immediately turn down the temperature to 375° F. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, rotating the sheets halfway through, until the scones are golden. Cool on a wire rack.

Author Notes: Very lightly adapted from The Cheese Board: Collective Works. - Nicholas Day

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Photos by Mark Weinberg