How a Scuffin Is Made, and Why the Shape Works

A Scuffin is a Savannah Scone Company original: scone dough pressed into a muffin tin and filled. It exists because somebody in a Savannah bakery decided a scone could do more than sit flat on a sheet pan.

That is the short version. Pull up a chair for the longer one, because the Scuffin is not a novelty shape. It is a genuinely different pastry that solves a few problems a traditional scone cannot, and once you understand how it is built, the whole thing makes sense.

Where the Scuffin came from

The Scuffin was invented at Savannah Scone Company. It did not come out of a recipe book.

Our founder made it up, and Savannah took to it fast enough that it became the thing the bakery is known for. That is the honest history. No test kitchen, no focus group, just somebody who bakes scones every single morning wondering what would happen with a different pan.

Most good things in food arrive this way. A baker tries something sideways, tastes it, goes quiet for a second, and then makes it again the next day. The Scuffin is now a permanent fixture around here, and you will not find a real one anywhere else.

How a Scuffin is made

A Scuffin starts with the same dough as every scone in the case: cold butter worked into flour by hand, until the dough is shaggy rather than smooth.

The cold butter is the whole game. In the oven, it melts and releases steam, and that steam pushes the dough apart into layers. Warm the butter by overworking it and the layers collapse into something dense. This is why scone dough gets handled as little as humanly possible, and it is true of a Scuffin exactly as it is true of a scone.

From there the Scuffin diverges in two ways.

First, the dough goes into a muffin tin instead of onto a sheet pan. The walls of the tin support the dough as it rises, so it climbs rather than spreads. The top domes and cracks. The sides and bottom set against hot metal and take on a golden edge you simply cannot get on a flat pan.

Second, and this is the part that matters most, a Scuffin is filled. The tin creates a well, and the well holds something: pecan pie filling, fruit and cheesecake, chocolate, breakfast fillings. A flat scone can carry mix-ins folded through the dough. A Scuffin can carry a genuine center.

Why the shape works

The muffin form solves three problems at once.

• It holds a filling. This is the big one. Fillings that would run off or break a wedge-cut scone stay contained in a Scuffin.
• It stays together in your hand. A scone can shatter. A Scuffin has structure, which makes it the better thing to eat while walking through a square or sitting in traffic on Abercorn.
• It changes the ratio. More tender interior relative to crust means the filling and the dough register in the same bite instead of competing.

It is worth being clear about what a Scuffin is not. Here is how the three compare:

A muffin bakes up cakey and uniform because a poured batter has nowhere to hide. A Scuffin bakes up layered and a little irregular because the dough was pressed by hand. That irregularity is the tell that something was made by a person and not a machine.

If you want the groundwork on what makes a scone a scone in the first place, we covered that in All About Scones.

The Scuffins we bake

Scuffin flavors run sweet and savory, and the roster rotates. Here is what tends to turn up.

Pecan Pie Scuffin. Rich, buttery pecan pie filling inside a golden scone shell. This is the one people describe with their eyes closed, and it is the flagship.

Fruit and Cream Scuffins. Seasonal fruit paired with a creamy cheesecake filling, baked right into the dough. Blueberry turns up often. The fruit changes with the season and with what looks good that week.

Chocolate chip. Straightforward, and better than it has any right to be.

Savory and breakfast Scuffins. The sturdier structure carries cheese, herbs, and breakfast fillings in a way a flat scone cannot. One note worth knowing before you drive over: any Scuffin made with meat is available at the Midtown Bakeshop only.

New flavors show up on the weekly menu regularly, because the experimenting never really stopped. The full lineup and current flavors live on our Scuffins page and this week's rotation is on the menu.

Where to get a Scuffin in Savannah

Savannah Scone Company bakes at two locations, both in Savannah, Georgia.

Midtown Bakeshop 713 E 65th Street Monday through Friday, 7:30am to 1pm

Downtown Coffee Shop & Scone Shop 31 W Congress Street Monday through Friday, 8am to 1pm

Both bake fresh every morning, and both sell out. Scuffins go early, so bless your heart if you stroll in at half past noon expecting your pick of the tray. Come on and get there sooner. If you are downtown, the Congress Street shop pours coffee alongside, which is the correct way to eat one. We have opinions about pairing coffee and scones, and they hold up here.

Can you order Scuffins online?

Yes. Scuffins ship nationwide through Goldbelly, so you do not have to be in Georgia to get a box at your door.

Shipping works the way it does for everything else we send out. Everything is baked, packed, and shipped so it arrives ready to warm and eat. We walked through the whole process in how our scones ship nationwide, including the best way to bring one back to life in your own oven.

Now tell us yours

Here is where y'all come in.

Everybody who has had a Scuffin has a favorite, and because the flavors rotate, no two regulars have quite the same list. We want to hear yours. Find us on Instagram or Facebook and tell us which Scuffin flavor you would drive back across town for. We read every one, and the answers have a way of shaping what shows up on the menu next.

Bring somebody who has never had one, too. Watching a person figure out the Scuffin for the first time is genuinely one of the better parts of this job.