This Giant Jam Bun Makes a Party Out of Teatime

A cross between a scone, cake and cinnamon bun, this giant jam bun is a swirly, almond-scented delight.

What do you call a scone crossed with a jam cake and a cinnamon roll?

The first time I tried it, I called it a Franken-scone. The pastry flattened, and the jam oozed like gloppy magma, burning at the edges of the pan. I had to resort to a butter knife to pry a tiny crumb from the baking sheet. And yet, from the first bite, the rich taste of butter, raspberry and caramel flooded my mouth. Maybe it wasn’t pretty, but I knew that with a few simple tweaks, this monstrosity could become something marvelous.

The whole thing was inspired by Erin Gardner’s giant cinnamon roll scone, in which she swaps the usual yeast dough with an easy-to-make scone pastry. She then forms it into a giant pinwheel and slices it into wedges before baking.

I wondered what would happen if I used jam instead of a brown sugar filling. Might this be the solution to one of my lifelong teatime obsessions: baking jam directly into a scone so it wouldn’t be dry?

This culinary fixation had already yielded two recipes. In one, I added raisin-like dried strawberries to a scone loaf to create sticky, jam-like pockets. In another, I gave scones the cookie treatment, plopping homemade plum compote into thumbprints, yielding cornmeal plum scones.

Those recipes are delightful, but my work wasn’t done. I wanted more jamminess. By adopting Erin’s pinwheel shape, I hoped to stuff even more jam into the dough.