These berry scones are fabulous with blackberries (as pictured), but you can also use raspberries or blueberries. Really, any small-ish berry your heart desires! The magenta royal icing gets its vibrant color from just a handful of berries, and the scones themselves have a dreamy texture and flavor, all thanks to one not-so-secret ingredient.
Read on or jump to the recipe if you wanna get right to baking.
Beautiful, magenta royal icing (with no food coloring!)
These scones are perfectly flavored and textured, but my favorite thing about this recipe is the vibrant berry icing. It gets its magenta color and moisture from just a small handful of berries. You can absolutely add a few drops of lemon juice to give it a little acidity, but if you want to really punch up the berry flavor while adding acidity, I recommend using this instead:
sumac! (but you can omit it if you don’t have any 😉)
Adding lemon juice works just fine, but sumac is a real hero ingredient here. So if you have some on hand, I recommend using it. Sumac is most often used in savory dishes, but it works equally well with sweet things. Its flavor is acidic with notes of berry, and it heightens the flavor of berries in the same way rhubarb works so well with strawberries. They’re a match made in heaven!
The secret to perfect scones
You might see “cream cheese” in the recipe list and think “wait, is this like a cheese danish situation?” But I can assure you, these are not cheesy in any way whatsoever. You don’t actually taste the cream cheese, as you would with a cheesy pastry. Instead, the cream cheese acts almost like a cultured butter, giving the dough a really fabulous texture and adding plenty of dairy fat in the process. The resulting flavor is somewhere between a perfect buttermilk biscuit and a classic scone. And since trying it this way, I will never make scones another way again.
Incorporating the berries into your berry scones
These berry scones are easy to throw together, but there is a trick to incorporating the berries without squishing them. Follow the recipe closely and they’ll turn out just fine. But just remember not to start compressing the dough before sprinkling on the berries. And careful not to let the food processor overwork the dough to begin with.
Dump the loose crumbs onto the counter, sprinkle on the berries, bring the dough together while making sure the berries are evenly distributed, and then start to compress once they’re all in place inside the shaggy mound of dough. It’s really hard to squish them once they’ve got even pressure from the dough that’s surrounding them, and even if you do manage to slightly squish one or two of them, it’s not a big deal once they’re already situated in the dough. And don’t worry if a few of them peek through the top or sides—as you can see from the photos, they’ll turn out really pretty either way.
Printberry scones
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Total Time: 35 minutes
- Yield: 8 scones
Ingredients
for the berry icing:
- 1 slightly heaped 1/4 cup [35g] berries*
- 1 cup [125g] icing sugar
- 1/4 tsp lemon juice or 2 tsp [6g] sumac
for the berry cream cheese scones:
- 2 cups [260g] all purpose flour
- ¼ cup [50g sugar] + more for sprinkling
- 1 tablespoon [12g] baking powder
- 1 teaspoon [6g] salt
- 3 tablespoons [55g] cold unsalted butter
- ½ of an 8oz brick [115g] cold cream cheese
- 2 large eggs [100g]
- 1¼ to 1½ cups [165g] berries
- Egg wash: 1 egg yolk beaten with 1 teaspoon water
- Decoration: berry icing (above), extra sumac (optional), and extra berries
Instructions
- For the icing**: Place the berries, icing sugar, and sumac or lemon juice in a food processor. Blend until completely smooth, then move to a small bowl and set aside for an hour or two until you’re ready to use. It should be very thick and should slowly run off of a spoon.
- Don’t wash the food processor! Give it a quick wipe or rinse to use again for the scones. No need to wash it fully, but just get rid of any big icing blobs or thick streaks, and dry it out if you rinsed it.***
- For the scones: Preheat the oven to 400°F [205°C].
- Place the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a food processor. Pulse 2 or 3 times to blend. Cut the butter and cream cheese into approximately 1 tablespoon blobs as you add them to the food processor. Pulse about 10 times until only small lumps remain. Add the eggs and pulse about 6 more times, just until the eggs blend in and the dough starts forming little clumps.
- Dump the clumpy crumbs out onto a parchment-lined sheet pan. Don’t compress the dough yet and spread it out into a loosely even layer. Sprinkle on the berries evenly. Very gently shape the dough into a loose mound, taking care to keep the berries evenly distributed in the dough as you work, and being careful not to squish them. Some of the berries will peek out and some will be hidden inside the dough.
- Once the dough looks like a shaggy mound, start to gently compress it into an approximately 7 inch [18cm] diameter circle (the berries will squish slightly, but once they’re in the mound of dough, it’s less likely you’re going to totally smash one, because the pressure on them is now very even).
- Cut the circle into 8 wedges, and space the wedges out evenly. Brush each wedge generously with egg wash, and sprinkle with a little extra sugar.
- Bake for 20 minutes, until golden brown and cooked through. Let them cool either on the sheet pan or a cooling rack, and then drizzle with icing. Decorate with extra berries and a little more sumac (optional) before the icing hardens.
Notes
* Blackberries, blueberries, and/or raspberries all work well in this recipe.
** If you’re not weighing your ingredients precisely, no worries—hold back a couple berries and add them gradually until the icing reaches your desired consistency. It’s better to start out slightly too thick and to have to thin it out with additional berries. If it turns out too thin, blend in a tablespoon more of powdered sugar at a time until it’s very thick but still pourable.
*** If you make this recipe scones-first/icing-second, then you should wash the food processor fully in between because of the raw egg and flour.
I originally posted this recipe in 2021, but updated it and reposted it in 2025.
Will there be blackberry seeds in the icing, or do you strain it? planning to make these tomorrow!
Eek sorry I didn’t catch your comment in time! In my experience, the seeds don’t have an effect on the look and taste. I never strain it, but if you prefer it to be seedless, feel free to (though you might want to use a tiny bit extra, because you’ll lose some moisture to the seed pulp).