In Utah, deep-fried bread is called a scone. Top the scone with this amazingly delicious honey butter and you have a match made in heaven.
Have you ever eaten something and after the first bite, you were transported back to a fond memory? That’s how I feel every time I eat these scones and honey butter!
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The Story Behind the Scones and Honey Butter
One of my earliest memories from my childhood was going to a restaurant called Me & Stan’s in Rexburg, Idaho with my grandparents. I distinctly remember the first time I bit into their scones covered in honey butter and I’ve been hooked ever since! Every time I visited my grandparents in Idaho, I always had to go to Me & Stan’s and get my fill. When I went to college in Idaho, I carried on my tradition and would go there often with my roommates.
When I was driving through Rigby, Idaho a few weeks back, I discovered that Me & Stan’s had closed! I was heartbroken. Not only are the scones and honey butter my favorite thing on this planet, but the memories made there were precious to me. I couldn’t imagine going the rest of my life without one of Stan’s scones slathered in honey butter! Going there every summer made me feel close to my grandparents who passed away many years ago. Later that week I googled Me & Stan’s and figured out that Stan, now 83 years old, had retired. I had tried to figure out how to make these on my own over the years and could never quite get it right.
After thinking about it for a couple of days, I decided to try to track Stan down. I figured it was a small town and he couldn’t be too hard to find! I got online again to search, and sure enough, there was Stan’s phone number! I called and he answered on the first ring! I introduced myself and told him about my memories of being a little girl and going to his restaurant with my grandparents and continuing to visit during my college days. We chatted for a while and he seemed delighted that I had called him. We became fast friends and we realized he had known many of my extended relatives who had passed on. I decided to get up the nerve to ask him if I could buy his recipes! He told me that he had sold it to a company in Utah and I was crushed! We continued to chat and I shared with him how I had tried replicating his honey butter and scone dough, but I couldn’t quite get it right! I told him all the ingredients I had used for the honey butter and he shared that I was really close to getting it right. He suggested to use a simple syrup made of sugar and water instead of powdered sugar and validated the rest of the ingredients I had mentioned to help me try to figure it out.
I then asked him about the dough. He told me to find a sweet bread or roll dough recipe from an old Idaho cookbook. Well, I just happened to have some of my grandma’s old Idaho cookbooks and I started looking through them. I was able to find a handful of recipes, so I had a good idea of what the right ingredients were. I started playing around with some of the recipes I found and I think I’ve finally come up with the perfect scone dough recipe that is as close to Stan’s as I can get!
I used a couple of Stan’s suggestions and was able to get the honey butter down perfectly as well! I was so excited! My family was too, of course, because now I can make the same scones and honey butter that they had grown up eating when we’d visited family in Idaho.
I appreciated the time Stan took to speak with me. He is a sweet and dear man! As we were ending our conversation, he told me to give him a call next time I’m in Idaho and we will go have a coke! I hope to be able to do that with him someday. I’ll never forget the impact this sweet man has had on my life with his delicious recipes and for taking the time to speak with me and share some tips to help me replicate the scones and honey butter. I hope you will also be able to feel a little bit of his love when you try these for yourselves!
*Lukewarm is hotter than you think so make sure your water and milk are warm enough to activate the yeast. Make sure the sugar is mixed in well too.
*If you don’t have a kitchen aid mixer, you can use any mixer that has a dough hook to mix up the dough. If you don’t have a stand mixer, you will want to mix it together with a spoon and then lay it on a floured surface and knead the dough by hand until it’s all mixed together well.
* For frying, I use a cast iron pan, but any deep frying pan will do.
*You can use vegetable or canola oil if you don’t have peanut oil or are dealing with any food allergies
*This will make a large batch of honey butter, but it can be stored for quite awhile in the refrigerator. You can half it if you don’t want to make this large of a batch. We use honey butter on cornbread, biscuits and my homemade rolls to so it’s nice to have a container of it on hand.
*When you’ve mixed all of the honey butter ingredients together, let it go a little longer to incorporate some air into it. This will make it more like a whipped butter.
Stan’s Honey Butter
Ingredients
- 1 lb Butter Room Temperature
- 1 lb Margarine Room Temperature
- 14 oz Marshmallow Creme
- 1/2 cup Water
- 1/2 cup Sugar
- 1 1/2 cup Honey
Instructions
- Mix 1/2 cup Water and 1/2 cup Sugar in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. As soon as the sugar has dissolved, remove it from the heat. Set aside to cool.
- In a stand mixer or large bowl with a hand mixer, whip 1 lb Butter, and 1 lb Margarine until they start to become fluffy. Then add in 1 1/2 cup Honey, 14 oz Marshmallow Creme, and the simple syrup.
- Keep whipping it until it’s all mixed together well and has formed a creamy, whipped consistency.
- Refrigerate 1-2 hours or until use.
Stan’s Scones
Ingredients
- 1 cup Water Lukewarm
- 1 cup Milk Lukewarm
- 1 TBSP Yeast
- 1/4 cup Butter Melted
- 4 TBSP Sugar
- 5 cups Flour
- 2 tsp Salt
- Peanut Oil For Frying
Instructions
- In a mixer or large mixing bowl, blend 1 cup Water, 1 cup Milk, 4 TBSP Sugar, and 1 TBSP Yeast and blend together well. Let stand until it bubbles and looks frothy on top.
- Melt 1/4 cup Butter and set aside.
- In a separate bowl, whisk the 5 cups Flour and 2 tsp Salt together.
- When yeast mixture is ready, add in the melted butter and then slowly add the flour and salt mixture one cup at a time. Mix together until everything is mixed together well.
- Spray a large bowl with cooking spray and transfer dough into it. Cover with a damp dishcloth and put in warm place for the dough to rise. Let rise for about an hour or until the dough has almost doubled in size.
- Sprinkle extra flour onto a clean surface and dump out the dough onto the floured surface. Rub flour around your rolling pin and start to roll the dough out into a rectangle. Roll out to about ½” thick and then cut them into 3”x3” sized squares.
- Put about 1-2” of Peanut Oil in a cast iron pan and heat to about 320-330 degrees. Do not exceed 340 or you will burn the dough. The scones should float in the oil and not sit on the bottom of the pan while frying.
- Fry scones on each side until a light brown color and flip over and do the same on the other side. They will begin to puff up. Drain on a plate with paper towels.
- Serve warm with honey butter.
To see more of the scones and a fun entertaining idea check out my Pie-oneer Day post.
I hope you love these recipes as much as my family and I do! Enjoy!
XOXO
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Photos by homewithhollyj and Cara @catcherintheryephotography – www.honeyandliving.com
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Wow….this is amazing…. I been looking for a honey butter recipe, but to my dimise.I couldn’t find one that was one I grew up on…rithereither they tasted to buttery or sweet with a nasty taste to me…What fun memories you can create on making these for your family…you’re already amazing.. I have a question though he told you to use a syrup , what kind did you use in your recipe? Did I overlook it on the recipe? Thanks for sharing will definitely be trying yours…
That’s exactly how I felt until I talked with Stan! The simple syrup is that water and sugar mixture!
Thanks Faye! This one will not disappoint! The syrup is just a mixture of water and sugar. It’s in the recipe I think! It’s just a mixture of sugar and water that you heat up to dissolve the sugar and then cool it down and add it to the rest of the ingredients.
What other oil would you suggest? So many peanut and tree nut allergies in my family. I can’t wait to try this recipe!!
Vegetable or Canola oil would work!
Love your recipes
Thank you Shirley! That makes me so happy!
Thank you Shirley! I appreciate it!
I love that you did the detective work and called Stan!! That place really had the best scones and honey butter. I am definitely adding this recipe to my “to make” list. Thanks Holly!
It was a really special experience to get to speak to Stan. He was the sweetest man and I hope to be able to meet him for a coke in Rexburg the next time I go through there! Let me know how they turn out if you make them!
These look soooooo good! I’m excited to try them. Has anyone tried it with just butter and no margarine? If so, did you make any other changes? I’m just not a fan of margarine. Wonder if it’s as fluffy with just butter?
I, too, was devastated when I found out they were closed. We always made a stop there on our summer vacations to Yellowstone. I was overjoyed to find your recipe today as I was thinking about Christmas ideas. Holly, I’m wondering if you know the name of the company that bought the recipe? Perhaps they sell it, which would be nice for those times you just need a fix of the real McCoy.
Thanks,
Diana
So glad someone who’s read this post knows about Me & Stan’s! I think the honey butter is a pretty close match but I still think the scone dough recipe could use some tweaking. It’s pretty darn close to though but not as good as I remember! Stan is such a sweetheart. I’d love to see if we could but the recipe from the company he sold it too but I wasn’t able to get that info from him. He just said it was a company in SLC. I wonder if it it’s rhodes dough??
Like!! I blog quite often and I genuinely thank you for your information. The article has truly peaked my interest.
When my wife and I were first married in the mid 90s my wife worked at Me and Stan’s, we fell in love with his scones and honey butter. My wife tried and tried to get Stan to share his recipe and he never would, he kept it top secret. We have tried for years to replicate these two recipes but never quit got it. Your recipes nailed it, tastes exactly like Stan’s. Thank You!!
That made my day reading this! I have such wonderful memories of Stans scones and honey butter. I’m so sad he decided to close it when he retired but so glad I was able to get the recipe figured out after talking to him. He is a darling man!
Thank you for sharing this sweet memory and delicious recipes. I can’t wait to make them! Could you share what brand of margarine you made the honey butter with?
Thanks so much! I just use whatever brand is avabalable. You can also just use real butter with the entire recipe if you want since margarine is so bad for you! I think blue bonnet is one I’ve used and a Kroger brand.
You should change the time on the top of your recipe. It says it takes 40min but you prove the dough for an hour. It’s misleading.
Thanks for the feedback. I made an adjustment in the notes.
Actually, Fry bread is fry bread in Utah and Utah scones are made with yeast. Fry bread is made with baking powder. The difference is Utah scones puff up more like donuts in a way and fry bread doesn’t puff up as much. I have notice many websites, especially a younger generation calling all utah scones fry bread and also including recipes for fry bread (baking poweder) as Utah scones. Not the same.
You’d be surprised Michael at how passionate people are about what they are called and what is actually a scone. My English followers and people from outside Utah and Idaho get really worked up when we call fried bread (with our without yeast) a scone. Either way it’s fried bread and my recipe uses yeast. A lot of people also get a little worked up that fry bread is Navajo fried bread. This is a no win no matter what I call them and the whole point is the story and the memories I have surrounding this fried yeast bread from Stan. Also, when creating a post or title, I take SEO into account so that my recipes and blog posts can be found when people are searching.
Did you actually read my post and recipe? Either way, it’s fried bread because it’s friend in peanut oil and we call them scones where my family is from in Idaho.
Thank you. We love stans so much too. Going to visit our college daughter in rexburg this weekend and started talking about stans and that led me to you! Thanks for doing the legwork and sharing!
Awhhh I love that you know about Me&Stans. I sure miss those scones and honey butter but I think the recipe I have is pretty close! I wonder if he is still alive and living in Rexburg?