Every year I try to come up with at least one new pumpkin recipe. Pumpkin isn’t my favorite flavor when it comes to fall flavors, but I know it’s one of the most popular. When I was looking at popular fall recipes on my site my Apple Cider Scones are pretty popular so I figured maybe a pumpkin scones recipe would also do well. I could have made plain pumpkin scones, but if you’ve seen my recipes you know I love making unique and creative flavors so I decided on chocolate chip pumpkin scones. Let’s get to it!
Because scones have a pretty delicate ratio of dry to liquid, I had to do some adjusting to my Best Vanilla Cream Scones recipe which is more or less the base to all my scones. I start from that and make changes. Because pumpkin puree is pretty wet, I needed to reduce the amount of cream so these wouldn’t be a sloppy mess.
Baking Tips
If you have never made scones before, my Best Vanilla Cream Scones is a really great place to start as far as a resource. It has all the best tips and tricks to get great scones. The main takeaways are good quality ingredients, keeping things cold, and not overworking the dough.
If you don’t have pumpkin pie spice, this is easily recreated with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, allspice and cloves. Instead of what the recipe calls for, I would use 3/4 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp nutmeg, 1/2 tsp ginger, 1/4 tsp allspice, 1/4 tsp clove. Whichever is easier, the taste will be more or less the same.
Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Scones Key Ingredients
- Pumpkin Puree – For the sake of making this recipe easier, I used canned pumpkin puree. If you want to use homemade you definitely can, however it tends to have a little bit higher water content so you may need to add a few tablespoons of extra flour to compensate for that.
- Chocolate Chips – I recommend semi sweet chocolate chips for this to keep the scones from becoming too sweet.
- Heavy Cream – The best heavy cream you can get is what you want. Make sure it’s heavy whipping cream and not regular.
Ingredients
- 300 g AP flour 2½ cups
- ½ tsp Sea salt
- 50 g Dark brown sugar ¼ cup
- ¼ tsp Baking soda
- 2 tsp Baking powder
- 1½ tsp Pumpkin pie spice**
- 112 g Unsalted butter cold
- 122 g Pumpkin puree ½ cup
- 120 g Heavy whipping cream ½ cup, cold
- 1 tsp Vanilla
- 1 large Egg cold
- 100 g Chocolate chips
- 2 tbsp Heavy Cream for brushing tops
Optional Chocolate Glaze
- 35 g Powdered sugar
- 28 g Cream cheese 1 oz, softened
- ½ tsp Cocoa powder
- ½ tbsp Milk
- pinch Sea salt
Instructions
- Place your butter in the freezer for about 20-30 minutes while your sweet potato cools. Line a baking sheet with parchment.
- In a large bowl, add flour, dark brown sugar, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon. Whisk together.
- Take your butter from the freezer and grate into your flour mixture. Halfway through, stop and fluff the butter into the flour using a fork. Grate remaining butter in and repeat.
- Create a well in the middle of your ingredients and add pumpkin puree, heavy cream, beaten egg, and vanilla.
- Using a fork, bring the dry ingredients into the wet and mix gently until a rough dough comes together. When the dough is crumbly and rough, add your chocolate chips and mix in.
- Gather the dough together using your hands into a disc like shape in the bowl. Fold the dough over onto itself, press back out and repeat 2 more times.
- Place the dough onto your lined baking sheet and press out into a square or circle that is about 1½ inches thick.
- Using a knife or bench scraper, cut into 8-9 pieces (depending on shape). When you cut, do not use a sawing motion but cut straight down.
- Pull the scones slightly apart, and place into freezer to chill for about 20 minutes.
- Preheat your oven to 425°F.
- When oven is ready your scones should feel quite cold and a little more firm but not frozen, remove them from the freezer and brush the tops with heavy cream. If you do not plan to glaze them, I'd recommend sprinkling them with some turbinado sugar.
- Bake the scones on the center rack of your oven for about 22-25 minutes. The tops should be lightly golden. Remove from oven and transfer to a cooling rack.
- While scones cool, prepare the glaze. In a medium-small bowl, add your softened cream cheese, cocoa powder, powdered sugar, salt and milk. Whisk until smooth.
- When scones have cooled, spoon or drizzle glaze on top. Store scones in an airtight container for 2-3 days, but they are best right after baking. Enjoy!
