PicoBlog

Have you ever tried the Starbucks pumpkin scone? (I actually haven’t, but hear me out!) I wasn’t planning to do another scone-themed micro bake off, but then I encountered the outrage over Starbuck’s discontinued pumpkin scone.

Given Starbuck’s attempt to fill the scone-shaped gap with a pumpkin cream cheese muffin (what) or their baked apple croissant (excuse me) along with the PLETHORA of a Starbucks copcyat pumpkin scone recipes available on the internet, it seemed like an opportune time to test some recipes in search of the best copycat recipe.

After some research, here’s what I found as the hallmarks of a Starbucks pumpkin scone:

• Soft, tender, cakey (?) texture

• Seemingly mild flavor

• Thick and somewhat firm white icing base

• Thin spiced drizzle on top

You’ll notice one of these scones clearly does not match the icing criteria. The reason? Many copycat Starbucks scone recipes actually identical and riffing off the same basic ratios. Ultimately, I chose Modern Crumb’s recipe as the third recipe because of its uniquely high liquid ratio despite the fact that the maple icing isn’t quite true to the original Starbucks scone.

As one of the first recipes that comes up when you Google “pumpkin scones,” Cooking Classy offers picturesque scones that look very similar to the original. I’ve historically loved Cooking Classy’s recipes (see the coconut cake bake off), so I was excited to try this one. This recipe is a tiny bit fussy in that it calls for a small quantity of a lot of ingredients (honey, half and half, buttermilk, etc.) but it looks easy to streamline if needed.

Recipe characteristics include:

• A food processor to cut in the butter

• Mix of brown and white sugar

• A short, hot bake time (13-15 min at 425)

• A simple white glaze that sets before adding a drizzle of a spiced pumpkin glaze

This recipe mainly differs from Cooking Classy in that it uses heavy cream instead of a buttermilk/half and half mixture. I was curious whether this added fat would make for richer, differently textured scones.

Recipe characteristics include:

• Rub in cold butter with your hands

• Folding dough technique to create layers

• A longer, less hot bake time (20-22 min at 375)

• One glaze recipe that gets divided into a generous white base glaze followed by a spiced drizzle

This recipe was interesting because it essentially has 1.5x the amount of flour and butter to the same volume of sugar, egg and pumpkin as the other recipes. It also incorporates 3/4 cup of liquid (milk and heavy cream)—a drastic increase over the 3-4 tablespoons in other recipes!

Recipe characteristics include:

• Rub in cold butter with your hands

• Folding dough technique to create layers

• A longer, less hot bake time (20-25 min at 375)

• Scant maple glaze

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