When it comes to classic scones, we think of Elizabeth II’s afternoon tea. Halve the scone horizontally, and slather each half with clotted cream and jam. Enjoy it with black tea poured from a bone china teapot. This is a quintessentially British ritual.
Since their introduction into Taiwan, scones have taken on distinctively local characteristics. Some have taro or sweet potato fillings; others are tantalizingly drizzled with cream. They’re accompanied with teas of all sorts of flavors.
Packed with characterful shops, the area around Taipei’s Yongkang Street is a popular destination for foreign tourists. With a branch located near Yongkang Park, Ciao Ciao Good Food specializes in scones crisp on the outside, and fluffy and moist on the inside. The small café has only three or four tables, but it prides itself on a dazzling variety of innovative scones, such as those sprinkled with pearl sugar on the top, crammed full of taro paste, or made with walnuts and maple syrup, carrying the fragrance of roasted tea.
Breaking the mold
Ciao Ciao’s 35-year-old owner, Cindy Wang, set up shop 11 years ago. While waiting for her US work visa, she started selling scones with various flavors—such as blueberry and chocolate—in Taipei’s Da’an District.
Initially doing it just for fun, Wang ended up diving wholeheartedly into the enterprise. She rented a workshop and opened a more spacious café on Hangzhou South Road. However, she was criticized on social media for her unconventional reinterpretations of scones.
With a self-confidence and open-mindedness typical of her generation, Wang acknowledges that British customers may challenge the authenticity of her scones: “But since I began, it’s never been my wish to stay in the mold. Taro scones are themselves ‘unauthentic.’ I started off in the US. American scones are also different from British ones.”
She tells us about a famous bakery in the US. It offered baking classes at a business school, and sold Taiwanese gua bao (pork wrapped in a steamed bun) at a local market, attracting many customers. “I went there with a group of Taiwanese people. We were shocked by what they were selling. What was that? The meat was shredded pork prepared in the Mexican style, and the pickles inside were also Mexican pickled cucumbers. Only the buns looked authentic. Nevertheless, locals were very receptive to this type of gua bao. This is a perfect example of adapting to local palates.”
Beginning with taro
Wang says that she started to bake taro scones because her mother loved taro. These curious new creations titillated her customers’ tastebuds. Taro being a popular food ingredient in Taiwan, Wang’s scones soon made a name for themselves.
Over a span of ten years, Wang has invented nearly 100 different scone recipes. For example, she mixes roasted, honey-glazed sweet potato into dough and bakes it. The resulting scones taste scrumptious with mint and cumin yogurt.
Redefining authenticity
Chen Li-ting, a senior researcher at the Food Industry Research and Development Institute, believes that we live in a subversive world where the word “authenticity” can be challenged and redefined. After all, the evolution of a product is necessarily intertwined with the characteristics of the environment in which it is found.
There are more and more shops across Taiwan specializing in scones. Whether these are classically British or infused with Taiwanese traits, they demonstrate local diversity and creativity. Merci Kitchen on Tainan’s Ziqiang Street sells a wide variety of scones, including those brimming with the aromas of baked tea or matcha, or packed with savory-sweet flavors. River Scones in Chiayi makes scones with roasted wheat flour or salted egg yolks, and creates fusions of scones and tiramisu. Embarrassing Scone in Taichung sandwiches taro paste, adzuki bean paste, or lashings of cream and strawberries between the two halves of a scone, making it look like an eye-catching mini burger. Rainforest Scone & Coffee in Hualien offers a pet-friendly environment. These shops are not to be missed if you want to know how Taiwanese people reimagine scones, whether you’re eating in while traveling or ordering a gift box to take away.
