Make these flaky jamdotted scones today.

Scones, the stalwart of bakeries, are all too often a disappointment. They are dry when they should be flaky, crumbly when you wish they were buttery. To paraphrase Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: When they are good they are very good indeed, but when they are bad they are horrid.

But in a restaurant in the small Maine town of Belfast is a scone to dream about, which I have done, dozens of times since I first tried it years ago. As large as a child’s outstretched hand, as brown as the restaurant’s weathered wood floors, the walnut scone at Chase’s Daily has a gentle sweetness and craggy edges, and a bull’seye of apricot jam. I haven’t had one is a few years, but it haunts me.

And so after thinking about them periodically for months, and in earnest for weeks, I finally made them, or at least a reasonable facsimile of Chase’s recipe. Allpurpose flour gives the scones structure, and a bit of oat flour lends sweetness. Toasted walnuts, ground and added to the flours, bring rich nuttiness, bolstered, of course, by good butter and heavy cream. There’s no magic to this recipe, but a gentle hand is helpful; you want to mix the dough just until it comes together, then turn it out on a floured work surface and gently pat it into a disk. Overworking the dough will lead to scones that are tough instead of tender.

The jam center is a key feature of these scones (in other words, don’t skip it). The scones are parbaked before the jam is spooned into their centers, because if it was added at the start of cooking it would become leathery and overcooked. Added halfway through, it becomes gently set, incorporated into the scone, yet still bright in flavor. I like the contrast of walnuts and apricot, but you could of course use any kind of jam you have on hand. But be generous with it; a full tablespoon in each scone gives you a bit in each bite.

You probably don’t need a dozen scones at one time, but it doesn’t make sense to make less — they freeze beautifully, so you can bake a couple anytime the craving hits. If that’s every day, this is nearly a oneweek supply for two. If you save them for Sunday mornings, a batch might hold you until the first strawberries start rolling in.

Jessica Battilana These walnut scones have a gentle sweetness and craggy edges — with a bull’seye of apricot jam.