Quick and Easy Gluten-Free Cheese Scones

Ingredient Notes:

For the full list of ingredients and amounts, please go to the recipe card below.

• Corn Flour—Be sure to use finely milled corn flour. Many corn flour companies sell more textured flour with hard bits of corn. I don’t recommend masa because it is flavored with lime juice.
• Sorghum and Tapioca Starch—If you prefer, you can use a gluten-free flour blend instead of individual kinds of flour. I recommend keeping the corn flour because it works well with the cheese and herb flavors.
• Baking Powder – Use aluminum-free baking powder.
• Sugar – Note a tiny bit is optional.
• Butter—You can use salted or unsalted butter, depending on your personal preference. If you want this dairy-free, use very cold vegan butter.
• Eggs – I used size large eggs.
• Cheese – Choose your favorite shredded cheese! I have enjoyed both cheddar and fontina.
• Herbs—Pick herb flavors to complement the cheese you are using. I recommend using dried herbs for baking.
• Milk – You can use any milk in this recipe. If you are dairy-free, you can use unflavored non-dairy milk.

Substitutions and Modifications:

1. If you can’t have corn flour, substitute with a gluten-free flour blend. Instead of using cornmeal, sorghum, and tapioca individually, use 1 1/2 cups + 2 tablespoons of gluten-free flour blend. If your gluten-free flour blend doesn’t contain xanthan gum, you must add 1 tsp.
2. Make them dairy-free by using cold vegan butter and vegan dairy-free cheese.

Step 1: Add your dry ingredients to a large bowl. Add very cold butter chunks. Use a pastry blender to cut the butter into the dough. When you are finished, you want your scone mixture to be grainy. If you don’t have a pastry blender, freeze your butter and then shred the butter into the dry ingredients with a cheese grater.

🔑 Sandi says: If you don’t have a pastry cutter, you can freeze the butter and use a cheese grater to grate the butter into the dry ingredients.

Step 2: Add the wet ingredients to a medium bowl and whisk to blend. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients.

Step 4: Shape the savory scone dough on a piece of parchment paper. Press to 1″ thickness and then cut the raw dough into sections. I also press around the edges to make them uniform and not as textured.

Use a knife to cut the dough into 8 wedges, as pictured above. This will make your cut lines so much easier to re-cut when the scones are baked! If you prefer, you can cut through the wedge lines and separate the scones for baking. Either way will work great.

Step 5: Then, lift the parchment paper and place it onto a large baking sheet. You can bake it directly on the parchment paper. This will prevent any sticking.

Ways to shape scones:

You can make your scones in any shape you like!! Here are my three favorite ways to shape scone dough:

1. Use a large cookie scoop to make your scones drop biscuit style.
2. If you like smaller scones, you can also use a mini scone pan like the one pictured below with maple bacon scone dough. This makes smaller scones perfect for entertaining.

See the little sections? You can fill each scone section with the scone batter. Can’t you just imagine a bread basket with cute little scones?

Step 6: Bake at 350º F for 20-25 minutes. The actual bake time will vary depending on whether you bake in a circle, scone pan, or drop style. Baking time can also vary by the thickness and size of the scones.