In my pastry-making days at the coffee shop, I made a lot of scones. The dough involved a decent bit of work, with all the frozen butter grating and dough rolling and whatnot. People really seemed to prefer our other pastries though, so a lot of times we'd end up having to throw some of the scones out, aka let the other employees fight over who got to take them home. I honestly think that was one of their favorite parts of the job--what did Leslie bake that I can take home today?
All that changed one day when for whatever reason--I can't remember if I was just being lazy or what--I decided that instead of rolling out the dough and then filling it with goodies before folding it up and cutting it into wedges, I would just mix the goodies directly into the dough and drop it by large spoonfuls onto the pan. I know that I had made drop biscuits a few times around then, so I'm assuming that's where the idea came from. I tried it out, and customers couldn't get enough of these scones. None of the flavors changed. We used the exact same recipe to make them; we basically just changed their shape, and people went crazy for them. It was so weird. They are slightly fluffier, I suppose, because the dough isn't rolled, but that's about the only difference. I only made scones this way after that point. I even made a double batch of these the morning of our wedding as breakfast for everyone who was helping us decorate.
