There’s a good chance that you enjoy eating scones with your coffee or tea. You might even be in the habit of eating them several times per week.
While this isn’t necessarily bad, scones aren’t exactly the healthiest type of food. They contain a lot of calories, and they are high in cholesterol, too.
Are you wondering if there’s a way you can make them a bit better for you, so you don’t have to worry so much when you eat them?
In this post, you’ll learn about various methods that you can utilize to make scones healthier.
Add Healthy Ingredients
Adding healthy ingredients to the scones can help you to justify eating them, as they aren’t generally considered to be healthy.
These pastries can be made in several different ways. There are classic butter scones that are sort of dry. Then you have scones that are commonly made using heavy cream, which have a cake-like texture and are quite rich as well.
Both types are popular, and both of them aren’t necessarily healthy. Scones contain many empty calories, and they’re also high in cholesterol.
For this reason, it might not be wise to eat too many of them. You can try to use healthier scone recipes that use healthy ingredients, though.
Also, some people like to add fruits and other healthy things to scones. Eating fruit along with them will at least add some nutritional value to the snack.
For example, it’s popular for people to eat scones along with bananas, strawberries, apples, and other types of fruit. You could cut pieces of the fruit up and serve them on top of the scones.
If you avoid adding ingredients that are high in calories, that’ll help, too. For example, you might not want to put whipped cream on top of the scone.
Try Replacing the Heavy Cream
Many people try to replace heavy cream in common scone recipes. Heavy cream makes scones delicious, but this ingredient also adds many calories and a lot of fat.
So you can see why people would look into alternative ingredients. There are some options that can help.
Some people have chosen to replace heavy cream with evaporated skim milk. Evaporated skim milk is much healthier than heavy cream.
The problem with this is that the scones won’t taste nearly the same. You can make them using just milk and some type of butter substitute if you want to, though.
Try Gluten-Free Recipes
Often, gluten-free recipes are going to be healthier than other recipe types. It’s common for these recipes to utilize healthier ingredients.
Not all of these recipes will be super healthy, but many of them will be at least slightly healthier. Replacing ingredients that contain gluten helps people who have food allergies or diseases such as celiac disease.
Since many of these scones will be dairy-free as well, you’re going to be able to eat them without consuming as many calories or as much fat content. So it can be useful to look through these recipes even if you don’t have a gluten allergy.
Are Blueberry Scones Healthy?
Blueberry scones aren’t necessarily healthy. There are plenty of blueberry scone recipes out there that aren’t remotely healthy.
However, there are also recipes that you can find that have a healthy spin. For example, you can find low-fat blueberry scone recipes online.
So if you want to enjoy blueberry scones while being as healthy as possible, it’s wise to seek out healthy recipes. Look for one that’s trying to make things as healthy as can be.
If you don’t specifically seek out a healthy recipe, you’re not likely going to get blueberry scones that are super healthy. Scones usually contain many calories, and they have high fat content, but this can be mitigated a little bit by using healthier ingredients.
Are Pumpkin Scones Healthy?
The same situation applies when looking at pumpkin scones. Pumpkin scones aren’t usually healthy, but you can find recipes that have been modified to make them healthier than normal.
Look for low-fat pumpkin scone recipes when you’re trying to watch your weight. This will give you scones that will turn out much healthier overall.
You still need to avoid eating too many of them in one sitting. It’ll just be easier to eat these scones without adding too many calories to your daily diet.
Pumpkin scones are indeed very tasty. You can find many solid recipes online that put a healthy spin on the concept.
Exercise Moderation
The most important thing to remember when enjoying scones is that you must exercise moderation. Scones aren’t the healthiest thing to eat, but you can still eat them without ruining your diet.
It’s true that there are low-fat scone recipes that you can look into. You can also try to replace certain ingredients to make them a little healthier.
Even when you do this, it’ll be possible to go overboard when eating. Eating too many will never be good for you, no matter what.
Exercising moderation is the best course of action. Be sure to limit the number of scones that you eat each day.
Count calories so you can avoid going over your daily limit. This will keep you from ruining your diet or gaining weight due to eating scones too often.
Scones can be figured into your daily calorie count. You may wish to avoid eating them every single day, but you can have one along with your cup of coffee if you’re willing to work it into your diet plan.
Always do your best to watch what you eat. Scones are delicious and can be enjoyed regularly, but you need to be careful with how much you eat them.
Set limits for yourself so you don’t go overboard when eating them. Only make a certain number so you won’t be tempted to eat more than you should.
Using such tricks should help you out quite a bit. Even if scones aren’t super healthy, it’ll be simple enough to enjoy them in moderation.
Final Thoughts
You know more about scones now, and that should empower you to make good decisions. Scones aren’t healthy pastries.
Most types contain empty calories, and they’re also rather fatty. They can even contain a lot of cholesterol.
Depending on your dietary needs, it might be recommended that you limit the consumption of such things. There are a few things you can do when you enjoy them and don’t want to cut them out completely.
You can look into healthy scone recipes. There are low-fat recipes that are healthier than the average recipes.
This should allow you to enjoy scones without consuming as many calories. It can also cut out fat content and lower the cholesterol that is present in the pastry.
This doesn’t mean that they’re truly healthy, but they’re healthier than they would otherwise be. If you want to enjoy the normal scones that you’ve come to love, you can do so in moderation.
Simply avoid eating more of them than you’re supposed to. Work them into your diet by counting the calories.
It’s up to you to decide how you want to approach things. Use the information above to your advantage and decide what is best for you.
Sarah is the founder of Baking Kneads, LLC, a blog sharing guides, tips, and recipes for those learning how to bake. Growing up as the daughter of a baker, she spent much of her childhood learning the basics in a local bakery.