Do I need to increase the liquid amount when adding cheese to my scone recipe?

Question

I would like to make a cheese scone out of my classic scone recipe. Recipe as follows:

Mix Dry:
450g self-raising flour
50g sugar
salt
100g frozen butter, grated into flour

Mix Wet:
2 eggs
Milk to make 300 ml

Mix wet into dry, flatten and cut into rounds, bake at 180C for 20 min.

I would like to add cheese to this recipe. 50g - 100g of cheese (really cheese-y!). I will also perhaps reduce the sugar for more of a savoury flavour. I would add the cheese to the dry before mixing with the wet.

Since I'm increasing the dry volume, I'd normally change the wet too, but cheese doesn't really absorb moisture. Do I still need to add more liquid? Also, now I'm practically doubling the amount of fat in this recipe. How will that affect things?

Answer 1

In general, I would expect this to work without adjustments.

The cheese is not actually a dry ingredient - as you say, it doesn't absorb moisture. If anything, it's slightly wet, in that as it melts in the oven, it will soak/meld into the scones a little. So if you had sufficient cheese, you might manage to turn things into a bit of a greasy mess. But in this kind of ratio, 50-100g of cheese and about 900g of other ingredients, that really doesn't seem like an issue.