Ridiculously Easy Cider-Glazed Apple Scones

Name: Ridiculously Easy Cider-Glazed Apple Scones
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 22 min
Total time: 32 min
Ingredients: 1 cup heavy cream; 8 tablespoons butter; 2 cups all-purpose flour; ¼ cup sugar; 1 tablespoon baking powder; ½ teaspoon cinnamon; ½ teaspoon salt; 1 medium Gala or Fuji apple (or other baking apple) (diced into 1/4-inch pieces); 3/4 cup apple cider; 1 tablespoon butter; 3 tablespoons sugar; 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

By Chris Scheuer | Updated on January 13, 2022

5 from 7 votes

These Ridiculously Easy Cider-Glazed Apple Scones are buttery, flaky, and studded with bits of tender apple. They're also ridiculously good!

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These Ridiculously Easy Cider-Glazed Apple Scones are buttery, flaky, and studded with bits of tender apple. They're also ridiculously good!

Guess what? Ridiculously Easy just got easier! If you follow The Café you're probably familiar with our ridiculously easy recipes. They belong to a series of crazy easy, never-fail recipes that are perfect for uncomplicated yet company-worthy entertaining. They also work well for everyday meals and family gatherings. These Ridiculously Easy Cider-Glazed Apple Scones tick all the boxes and might just be the easiest Ridiculously Easy recipe of all!

A brilliant technique

I love researching recipes and techniques that make cooking for family and/or friends easier as well as more enjoyable and rewarding. One of the brilliant techniques I discovered several years ago in Cook's Illustrated magazine was a way to eliminate the classic "cutting butter into flour" step that most biscuit recipes call for. You can read more about the easy process in our Ridiculously Easy Buttermilk Biscuit post.

Since posting that recipe, I've gotten emails from people all over the world who had never experienced success with biscuit making before. They've been as thrilled as I was with the easy technique. Some have actually written to say that they've become renowned "biscuit makers" in their circles of family and friends! There are scads of comments from happy bakers below the post, but here are a few of my favorites:

Thank you for this easy-to-follow recipe. I have never made biscuits before and they were beautiful. I am probably more proud of myself than I should be! They were fun to make and tasted great as well.

I have been searching, saving and trying various biscuit recipes for years!!! I have finally found my biscuit recipe. Absolutely tender, amazing and delicious. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Now to delete all the other biscuit recipes I've saved!

Made these this morning, and man oh man! Delicious! Very easy and hassle-free. It took me about 10 minutes from start to oven. Thanks for a new staple!

I made the buttermilk biscuits and let me tell you they were the best I ever made. I have tried so many recipes and this one was a hit, thank you so much.

I feel so lucky to have found this astounding recipe! I'm from the south US so I know all about biscuits…alas living in NYC means restaurants rarely have them on the menu. But making them was so fussy, I got butter everywhere and they didn't turn out. I've made these 4 times so far and they are always wonderful!

Would this wonderful, easy technique work with scones?

A few months after finding this super-easy way to make biscuits, I decided to try the Cook's Illustrated genius technique with scones, which often also require the "cutting technique". I was shocked to discover the same wonderful (easy) success with my scones and posted the recipe for these Ridiculously Easy Maple Pecan Scones. These have also been super popular with Café readers and have lots of 5-star comments.

So here we are with a new Ridiculously Easy scone recipe, melt-in-your-mouth delicious and perfect for the fall and holiday season. These Easy Cider-Glazed Apple Scones will be a hit for family breakfasts and brunches with friends.

I used a drop technique for these scones rather than rolling out the dough and cutting it into wedges as with classic scones. This drop technique creates a beautiful, rustic scone and the bits of diced apple poking out all over the place makes them pretty much irresistible. The bonus is that this technique also makes the recipe even more ridiculously easy! Certainly a win-win for me!

The glaze is amazing!

The cider glaze is also easy but adds a wonderful layer of flavor to the already delicious scones. While the scones bake, it's simply a matter of boiling apple cider with a bit of butter and sugar until syrupy. After 15 minutes of baking time, the scones are brushed with this fabulous glaze and popped back in the oven for a few more minutes to set the glaze. See what I mean? So easy, and so pretty!

All this to say, if you think scones are just for experienced bakers, give these Ridiculously Easy Cider-Glazed Apple Scones a try. If you can stir and scoop, you can make them. I promise! And after you become the famous scone maker in your family or at your workplace, be sure to come back and share your results in the comments below. It will give others the confidence to try the recipe too!

Café Tips for making these Ridiculously Easy Cider-Glazed Apple Scones

The recipe for calls for one apple, diced ¼-inch thick. I use my Vidalia Chop Wizard to chop an apple for these scones in less than a minute. In fact, the last time I made them, my 5-year old granddaughter, Emmy did the chopping for me - and had a grand time doing it! I keep my Vidalia Chopper handy because I use it all the time. It's also perfect for dicing carrots, potatoes, squash, zucchini, onions, peppers, and sweet potatoes.
I use a one-third cup ice cream scoop (#12) to make sure my scones are a uniform size. This also gives them a nice round shape. This size scoop will yield 8-10 scones, depending on how full you fill the scoops. You could also make smaller scones by using a smaller scoop.
If your cream mixture doesn't form the "clumps", your cream probably wasn't cold enough. You can stick the whole mixture in the freezer for another 5-8 minutes, then stir with a fork and you should see the clumps.
You don't want to overmix scone dough. That being said since these scones don't get kneaded, be sure to make sure all of the flour at the bottom of the bowl is incorporated into the dough before scooping up the scones.
In lieu of the cider glaze, these scones would also be delicious drizzled with the Maple Glaze from this post.
You can make these scones several hours ahead of time. Just scoop them up onto your sheet pan, cover them with plastic wrap and pop the whole tray into the refrigerator. When ready to bake, transfer to the oven and bake as directed. They make take a minute or two longer.
You can also make these Easy Cider-Glazed Apple Scones and freeze them, unbaked. Pull as many as you want out of the freezer and bake as directed, adding a few extra minutes to the total baking time. You want to look for a pretty golden brown color.

P.S. You might think from this post that the Café Ridiculously Easy series is inclusive of biscuit and scone recipes. Nope! There are recipes for crackers, dinner rolls, bread, focaccia, caramel sauce, cinnamon rolls and more. The series is inclusive, however, of super easy, super delicious, company-worthy, never-fail recipes!

P.P. S. I just made another batch of these and am nibbling on one as I finish up this post. MAKE THEM!! They are melt-in-your-mouth, outrageously DELICIOUS!!

Thought for the day:

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen,
but on what is unseen,
since what is seen is temporary,
but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:18

What we're listening to for inspiration:

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