If you’re a fan of homemade flaky pastries you’ll love our low fat Cottage Cheese Scones!
This easy recipe is based on the classic scone, with a significant amount of the butter substituted for healthy cottage cheese.
The scones rise nicely in the oven, producing a moist interior and crunchy beautifully browned exterior.
We love serving these Cottage Cheese Scones for breakfast or a midday snack with homemade jam and a hot pot of coffee or tea. You can also serve them as a dessert with vanilla ice cream and sliced berries as a fun play on strawberry shortcake.
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What Is Cottage Cheese?
Cottage cheese, also known as “curds and whey,” is a curdled milk product that has a mild flavour and a creamy, sometimes soupy texture. It is made from skimmed milk by draining curds but retaining some of the whey.
An essential step in the production process distinguishing cottage cheese from other fresh cheeses is the addition of a “dressing” to the curd, usually cream, which is responsible for the taste of the product.
Cottage cheese can be low in calories compared to other types of cheese — similar to yogurt, this makes it popular among dieters and some health conscious cooks and bakers.
In Eastern European cuisines like Russian and Polish, cottage cheese is sold pressed with the liquid removed so it can easily be crumbled and added to the interior of periogies, for example.
When making homemade Cottage Cheese Scones I always use the pressed variety, but if your grocery store doesn’t sell it you can purchase the typical tub and simply strain the cheese curds out of the whey before adding to the mixing bowl. Add the leftover whey to your next smoothie!
What Are Cottage Cheese Scones?
A scone is a traditional British baked good, popular in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
It is usually made of either wheat or oatmeal with baking powder as a leavening agent, and baked on sheet pans. A scone is often slightly sweetened and occasionally glazed with egg wash, which gives it a nicely browned apperance.
The scone is a basic component of the cream tea, similar to Afternoon Tea. It differs from teacakes and other types of sweets that are made with yeast.
Scones sold commercially are usually round. When prepared at home, they may take various shapes including triangles, rounds and squares. Baking scones at home is often closely tied to heritage baking in British families, passing recipes from one generation to the next. One of our families favourite scone recipes is Cream Cheese Glazed Carrot Cake Scones.
Cottage Cheese Scones follow a classic recipe but are lower in fat as some of the butter is substituted for dried pressed cottage cheese.
Difference Between Scones & Biscuits
Recipes for biscuits and scones include minimal ingredients like flour, fat, some kind of dairy, leavener, salt, and sometimes a flavoring element or two.
Both get their rise from the addition of chemical agents like baking soda and/or baking powder — instead of a sourdough ferment or commercial yeast.
Cold fat is imperative for both, and they each benefit from not being handled too much, or they become tough. Both generally bake quickly, for only 15 to 20 minutes, in a hot oven.
The main distinction between biscuits and scones is their texture. Biscuits are flaky and buttery. Scones, on the other hand, are dense and crunchy, drier and crumblier than their fluffy counterparts. This is because biscuits have more butter, while scone recipes employ heavier ingredients like heavy cream or buttermilk.
My Family Loves Cottage Cheese Scones
Seeing that my family has Irish and Scottish heritage it’s no wonder we all love biting into freshly baked scones.
My grandmother from Edinburgh always had a box of scones at home, toasting them each morning and slathering them with cold butter and fresh berry jam.
As a professional food and travel writer I’ve unintentionally become an expert in Afternoon Tea. I’ve enjoyed high tea throughout the UK as well as at famous luxury hotels from Mumbai’s Taj Hotel to the many High Tea options in my native Toronto.
Scones are the centrepiece of any high tea 3-tiered service, typically served with clotted Devon cream and berry jam or marmalade. During special holidays like Christmas, Mother’s Day and Valentine’s Day many pastry chefs bake special recipes like Gingerbread Scones to celebrate the season.
If you’re looking to prepare a low fat version of the popular British pastry this Cottage Cheese Scone recipe will delight. The cottage cheese gives structure and flavour to the dough, without sacrificing the desired flaky texture and buttery mouthfeel.
Recipe Baking Tips
If it’s your first time making Cottage Cheese Scones from scratch here are some helpful baking tips.
- The key to baking the perfect scones is to ensure the butter you are using is very cold. You also want to handle the dough with minimal touch and as quickly as possible to avoid having the butter melt. The desired flaky texture of scones is achieved when cold butter melts in the oven and steam escapes, similar to croissants.
- Traditional scone recipes often recommend slicing cold butter into tiny cubes before combining into the dry ingredients. Our favourite scones tip is to actually shred frozen butter using a cheese grater. This ensures the cold butter distributes evenly throughout the dough.
- We like to bake triangle shaped scones, which can easily be made by rolling out the dough into a circle and then simply slicing into triangles. You can also use a circular cookie cutter to make a more uniformly shaped scone.
- We’ve used cold milk in this recipe but you can substitute with buttermilk if you prefer.
- We suggest buying dry pressed cottage cheese, which you can easily crumble into the dough. If unavailable at your grocery store by a tub and strain the curds out of the whey to achieve similar results.
- You can typically purchase cottage cheese with 0%, 2%, 5% or 10% milk fat. Feel free to use whatever variety your diet allows.
- Once perfected, this scone recipe is an excellent launching point to add additional ingredients like nuts, dried fruit, and spices.
What To Serve With Cottage Cheese Scones
We love making these Cottage Cheese Scones year round.
We often add seasonal ingredients to the dough before baking: cinnamon and dried apple in the Fall for Thanksgiving and roasted hazelnuts with dried cranberries and orange rind in the Winter for Christmas.
The flaky pastries are eye-catching served in a breakfast or brunch bread basket, or serve as a dessert with fresh berries and vanilla ice cream as an ode to strawberry shortcake.
Or serve them at afternoon tea with a pot of hot tea or coffee and side of Devon cream, lemon curd, jams, crustless sandwiches and bite-sized sweets.
You May Also Enjoy Baking Recipes…
- Festive Fresh Fig Frangipane Pistachio Tartlets
- Swedish Rhubarb Cherry Pie
- Creamy Lemon Angel Pie
- Old School Cheese and Onion Pie
- Savoury Pickle Pie
- Gianduja Lindt Lindor Chocolate Cake
- Caribbean Coconut Rum Banana Bread Bundt Cake
- Moist Baileys Banoffee Cake
- Turmeric Pumpkin Spice Indian Cake
- Swedish Strawberry Meringue Cake
- Blueberry Lemon Ricotta Cheese Muffins
- Old Fashioned Cherry Custard Pie
- Flaó Ibizan Cheese Mint Tart
- Maulwurfkuchen German Mole Cake
How To Make Old Fashioned Cottage Cheese Scones
Cottage Cheese Scones
Ingredients
- 2 cups All Purpose Flour
- 1 tbsp Baking Powder
- 1/4 tsp Baking Soda
- 1/2 tsp Kosher Salt
- 1/2 cup Cottage Cheese
- 1/2 cup Cold Milk
- 3 oz Frozen Unsalted Butter grated
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425 F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a baking mat.
- Whisk the flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda together in a large mixing bowl. In another bowl, whisk together the cottage cheese and milk.
- Scatter the grated butter over the dry ingredients and toss to coat.
- Pour the cottage cheese and milk mixture over the dry ingredients and, using a fork, gently toss, turn and stir until you've achieved a soft dough.
- Lightly dust a work surface with flour and turn out the dough. Dust the top of the dough with flour and pat the dough out with your hands into a circle until 1/2 inch thick.
- Slice dough with a sharp knife into 8 triangle wedges. Transfer them to the baking sheet.
- Bake biscuits for 14-18 minutes, or until tall, puffed and golden brown. Remove them from the baking sheet and serve immediately.
Nutrition
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