A simple recipe for high altitude lemon cream scones or lemonade scones, made with just a few basic ingredients. These easy lemon scones are soft and fluffy, not too sweet, and delicious with jam and cream, drizzled with sweet lemon icing, or even used for individual strawberry shortcakes.
You might also love these high altitude recipes for lemon bundt cake, lemon lush dessert, and iced lemon curd linzer cookies.
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Lemonade Scones vs Lemon Cream Scones
Most American recipes for lemon cream scones use standard scone ingredients like flour, sugar, butter, baking powder, milk, and lemon juice and/or lemon zest. They’re usually sweeter, like a lemon pastry, cut into a classic wedge shape, and drizzled with icing.
Lemonade scones are a popular recipe in Australia, and they typically only call for three ingredients: self-rising flour, lemonade and cream. But it’s important to note that lemonade in Australia is not what we know it as in America, but actually a fizzy lemon soda, such as Sprite. The scones are cut into rounds not wedges, and baked in a baking pan so that they’re touching. The finished scones or biscuits can then be cut apart and served warm. They’re usually served with jam and soft, sweet whipped cream (or clotted cream).
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
Not Too Sweet. With only the sugar from the Sprite to sweeten the scones, they’re not overly sweet on their own.
Only 6 Ingredients. With just a few staple ingredients needed, you likely have everything on hand for these lemon scones.
Quick and Easy. The biscuit like dough is simple to make, just by stirring everything together in a bowl. And if you don’t want to cut biscuits, you can just spoon the dough into the pan.
High Altitude Tested. I develop all the recipes on my site for Denver’s altitude of 5,280 feet. If you’re at a lower or higher elevation, please see my FAQs for guidance on adjusting recipes for your altitude.
Ingredients
- Flour. I don’t use self rising flour for high altitude baking, since I want to control the amount of leavening. So instead, you’ll be using all-purpose flour for today’s lemon cream scones.
- Salt. Flavor.
- Baking Powder. Leavening agent, so the biscuits rise as they bake.
- Lemon Zest. Freshly grated lemon zest adds more lemon flavor and brightness.
- Lemon Soda. You can use Sprite, or another brand of lemon-lime flavored soda. The fizzyness makes a light, tender scone.
- Cream. I used heavy whipping cream, and while you may be able to use a lighter cream, you would likely need to use a little less, if it’s not as thick as heavy whipping cream.
See the recipe card at the end of the post for the full ingredients list and instructions.
Instructions
Make the Dough
- Preheat the oven to 425 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven. Line a 9×9 inch square baking dish with parchment paper, or spray with non-stick baking spray.
- In a bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, baking powder and lemon zest, until well combined.
- Pour the Sprite into the flour mixture; it will fizz and bubble up. Add the cream, then use a spatula to stir the dough into a sticky, shaggy dough.
Cut the Scones
- Generously flour your counter, then scrape the dough out onto the counter. Sprinkle the top of the dough with more flour so it doesn’t stick to your fingers, then pat the dough out to about 1 1/2 inches thick.
- Use a 2-inch round biscuit cutter to cut rounds of dough (dipping the cutter in flour in between cuts), then arrange them in the pan so they’re touching. Gather up the scraps, and continue cutting more rounds of dough. You should be able to cut 16 scones or biscuits.
- If you prefer, you could also simply use an ice cream scoop with a release lever to drop scoops of dough into the baking pan. Just like with a biscuit cutter, dip the ice cream scoop in flour in between each, or the dough will stick.
Bake
- Bake the scones for about 20-22 minutes, until golden brown on top and baked through (you can check for doneness by sticking a knife between two scones, making sure there’s no raw dough).
- Cool the scones in the pan for 10 minutes, then cut them apart and serve immediately.
Serving Suggestions
- Jam + Cream. Clotted cream or whipped cream with jam is the classic way to serve a scone in the UK and Australia. Or, you can just serve them with butter and jam.
- Lemon Curd. For more lemony goodness, split the scones in half and fill them with tangy lemon curd.
- Lemon Icing. For a sweeter finish, you can drizzle the warm scones with lemon icing. Get my lemon icing recipe in this post for lemon pistachio loaf cake.
- Strawberry Shortcakes. These lemony biscuits are ideal for individual shortcakes, split and filled with sweetened whipped cream and strawberry compote.
Be sure to read all of my BAKING FAQs where I discuss ingredients, substitutions and common baking questions, so that you can be successful in your own baking!
Frequently Asked Questions
While I’m sure you can use self rising flour, I cannot advise on the correct amount to replace the flour, baking powder and salt, to ensure good results.
Store leftover scones in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 2 days.
Reheat scones in the microwave at 50% power for about 20-30 seconds, or for several minutes in a toaster oven.
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High Altitude Lemonade Scones (Lemon Cream Scones)
All recipes on Curly Girl Kitchen are developed for high altitude at 5,280 feet. See FAQs for adjusting to higher or lower elevations.
Equipment
Ingredients
- 3 ¾ cups all-purpose flour, fluffed, spooned and leveled
- ¾ tsp coarse Kosher salt (if using table salt, use half the amount)
- 4 tsp baking powder
- 1 tbsp freshly grated lemon zest
- 1 cup Sprite or lemon-lime soda, cold
- 1 cup heavy whipping cream, cold
Instructions
Make the Dough
- Preheat the oven to 425 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven. Line a 9×9 inch square baking dish with parchment paper, or spray with non-stick baking spray.
- In a bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, baking powder and lemon zest, until well combined.
- Pour the Sprite into the flour mixture; it will fizz and bubble up. Add the cream, then use a spatula to stir the dough into a sticky, shaggy dough.
Cut the Scones
- Generously flour your counter, then scrape the dough out onto the counter. Sprinkle the top of the dough with more flour so it doesn't stick to your fingers, then pat the dough out to about 1 1/2 inches thick.
- Use a 2-inch round biscuit cutter to cut rounds of dough (dipping the cutter in flour in between cuts), then arrange them in the pan so they're touching. Gather up the scraps, and continue cutting more rounds of dough. You should be able to cut 16 scones or biscuits.
- If you prefer, you could also simply use an ice cream scoop with a release lever to drop scoops of dough into the baking pan. Just like with a biscuit cutter, dip the ice cream scoop in flour in between each, or the dough will stick.
Bake
- Bake the scones for about 20-22 minutes, until golden brown on top and baked through (you can check for doneness by sticking a knife between two scones, making sure there's no raw dough).
- Cool the scones in the pan for 10 minutes, then cut them apart. Serve immediately with butter and jam, or lemon curd and soft whipped cream.
- For a sweeter finish, you can drizzle the warm scones with lemon icing. Get my lemon icing recipe in this post for lemon pistachio loaf cake.
These are perfect! Not too sweet, with a yummy lemon flavor. The rise on them is incredible. I really enjoyed this recipe.
Yum! And oh so cute! Easy to make and turned out perfect – wonderful texture and taste fantastic. Thank you.
These are absolutely insane. (In a great way). I made these to use up some heavy cream I had leftover and used zero sugar sprite instead of regular, because that’s what I had. Because I used zero sugar, they came out not sweet, but still incredibly flavorful! I’ll make it with regular sprite next time, but either way the base flavor is AAmazing.