Sugar-Free Scones – Chocolate chip and walnut

These lovely chocolate chip sugar-free scones with walnuts are perfect for afternoon tea or brunch! They’re sugar-free but are still absolutely delicious!

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Scones are a great recipe to have in your back pocket and these chocolate chip scones are no exception! Packed with chocolate chips and chopped walnuts, these little scones taste wonderfully decadent despite the fact that they’re sugar-free!

If you’ve never tried making scones, I 100% recommend you try them because they’re actually much easier than you would expect.

Why make this Recipe?

  • Easy: Scones seem fancy but are actually super easy to make, which makes them the perfect choice for a quick brunch!
  • Delicious: Despite being sugar-free, these chocolate scones are completely delicious, and they taste rather indulgent.
  • Sugar-Free: These scones definitely aren’t healthy, but if you’re looking to cut back on sugar, these are a great option.

What Do I Need to Make these Sugar-free Scones?

Flour, butter, heavy cream, chocolate chips, walnuts, salt and baking powder – it’s a pretty simple ingredient list and most of these are things you probably already have on hand!

A note on the cream: I love using cream in scones because it adds fat to them, which makes them rich and tender. That being said, you don’t have to use cream if you’d prefer to reduce the fat content of these pastries! You can instead use a combination of milk and yogurt to achieve delicious results!

Helpful equipment

This recipe is actually pretty minimal in terms of equipment, but there are a few things that really help:

  • I use Silicone Baking Mats all the time, and they work really well for scones. Personally, I think that these mats are well worth the investment and I love that I can skip the parchment paper.
  • Some kind of Bench Scraper is a really fantastic tool. You can get super cheap ones, and you can get fancier ones. I got mine at a hardware store for $2, and it’s honestly one of my favorite tools. For scones, I use one to mix the dough together, help me shape it into a disk and then cut it into wedges.
a single scone

How to Make this Recipe

Step 1 – Combine the dry ingredients and butter

Add all your dry ingredients to a large bowl and give it a good stir before rubbing in the cold butter until you have no large pieces of butter left. 

Stir in the chocolate chips and walnuts until evenly distributed.

Step 2: Add the wet ingredients

In a small bowl or jug, whisk together the wet ingredients and then stir them into the flour mixture. Gently bring the dough together until it just stays together.

Step 3: Bake your chocolate chip scones

Press the dough into a thick disk and then cut into 8 pieces (or more if you want smaller scones). Brush the scones with a little heavy cream if you’d like. Bake at 400 F for about 20 minutes until lightly golden and well risen.

Expert Tips 

Freezing scones

If you want to prepare your scones ahead of time, you can absolutely do that. You have two options, either freeze the scones before baking or freeze them once baked. 

If you freeze them before baking, I recommend freezing them on a tray until solid and then transferring them to a ziplock bag. To bake, just bake from frozen, adding 3-4 minutes to the baking time. 

To freeze baked scones, simply wrap them well and freeze. To reheat, bake them in the oven at 350 F for about 5 minutes.

What is the secret to great scones?

To achieve light, flaky results, it’s important to not overwork the dough! Instead, just gently bring the dough together.

Recipe FAQs

What can I substitute for heavy cream in scones?

You can use buttermilk or a combination of milk (or non-dairy milk) and yogurt.

How long can you store scones?

Scones generally only last a couple of days at room temperature, but you can freeze them for up to 3 months. 

Other Recipes you Might Like

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a single scone

Sugar-Free Scones – Chocolate chip and walnut

These little sugar-free scones are flaky and delicious – perfect for afternoon tea or brunch.
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Total Time 30 minutes
Course Breakfast, brunch
Cuisine American
Servings 8 scones

Equipment

  • bowl
  • Baking tray

Ingredients
  

  • 250 g AP flour
  • 1 tbsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 75 g butter cold from the fridge and cut into small pieces
  • 60 g chocolate chips
  • 40 g chopped walnuts
  • 1 egg
  • 110 g cream or 90 g milk and 30 g whole milk yogurt
  • 15 g maple syrup optional
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla extract optional

Instructions
 

  • Preheat the oven to 400 F
  • In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt and stir well to combine.
  • Add the butter to the dry ingredients and rub it into the dry ingredients using your fingertips. Keep going until there are no large pieces of butter left.
  • Tip in the walnuts and chocolate chips and stir until evenly distributed.
  • In a small bowl or jug, combine the egg and cream (or egg, milk and yogurt) and whisk until smooth. Pour this into the flour mixture and carefully work it all together with a fork or a bowl scraper.
  • Tip the mixture onto your counter and knead it together very gently until it just about stays together. It’s better to under knead at this point. Press the dough into a round disk about 1 – 1.5 inches thick and slice into 8 wedges.
  • Brush with a little extra cream if you would like and bake for 20 minutes and then set aside to cool.

Notes

Dairy Products:
Scones are reasonably forgiving, so you can play around with the dairy products you use. You want to aim for a mixture of milk, cream and yogurt that weighs about 115 g in total. For rich indulgent scones, use just straight cream. For a slightly less rich scone, use a combination of milk and yogurt. The yogurt adds a bit of fat and will help with the rise of your scones, while the milk will give you the liquid content you need. Lastly, you can also make these with buttermilk for a more classically American take on scones.
 
Sugar-free:
I’ve included an optional splash of maple syrup here, but they’ll be delicious without the syrup if you’d like to skip the sweetener. For a truly sugar-free scone, make sure you choose dark chocolate that is sugar-free!
Keyword scones, sugar-free


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