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I made Jalapeño and cheddar scones from The Savory Baker: 150 Creative Recipes, from Classic to Modern and it also ran in Cook's Country Magazine, Dec 2021/Jan 2022 (Jalapeño-cheddar scones), and I ran into problems. I would welcome the feedback of more experienced bakers. This was my first time making scones.

Recipe called for 15-17 minutes of baking on the middle oven rack at 425ºF, turning the sheet at the halfway point. At which point, you brush the scones with a honey-butter, and bake for an additional 3-5 minutes until golden brown. I baked for 8 minutes and turned, at that point, the scones were leaking butter. Perhaps this is normal for scones, but I don't know. I baked for 9 minutes and removed from the oven to do the glazing. The scones were still quite light, looking undercooked. I glazed them anyway, but moved the oven rack up and returned them to the oven. It took about 10 minutes for them to turn golden.

The scones taste fine, but they don't have a very light texture, and there were the oddities of the cooking time versus the recipe.

I'm confident that all the ingredient measures were correct. Butter and cheese were both well chilled when the dough was put together. Jalapeño peppers were room temperature, coming from a freshly opened jar, and were well drained. The dough seemed to have an appropriate texuture based on videos I've watched online. I did chill the dough after forming and placing on the baking sheet. Recipe called for at least 30 minutes, I chilled it for 1 hour.

I verified the oven temperature was correctly set multiple times and after finishing baking even verifed the temperture with an oven thermometer and it was spot on -- oven set at 425ºF, the thermometer read exactly 425ºF. It had been years since I'd tested the oven's accuracy and I was pleased to find it still accurate, and the oven is 12 years old (General Electric Adora gas range for the record). And I live at essentially sea level for how altitude affects things.

Could bad baking powder explain what happened? I don't bake often and it could be a culprit.

I've made loads of scones from various different recipes and I have never heard of chilling the scones before putting them in the oven. I've always cut the scones out and popped them straight into a preheated oven.  I was told that the baking powder is activated once it hits the liquid, so you need to get whatever you're baking in the oven as soon as possible after that.

Usually it's overworking the dough that results in scones that aren't light and airy, but if your baking powder isn't fresh that definitely won't help either (you can test it - put some in water and see if it bubbles strongly).  

Now I'm hankering for warm cheese scones!

Scones aren't as light as biscuits, but if yours were more dense than what is normal for a scone, it was likely either the baking powder or working the dough too much. As for the temperature, it sounds like yours baked about 5 minutes more than the recipe says, if I'm understanding correctly. This happens to me frequently with recipes. I go by look, smell, taking the temperature. Not all cookbooks say if they based it on a fan-assisted oven, so that might be the variance. We're all told to turn the temperature down if we use the convection fan, but many cookbooks today base the timing on using the convection fan. In that case, if we aren't using convection, but the recipe was tested with convection, it would take longer or the temperature would need to be increased. Considering the leaking butter, I'd increase the temperature next time to resolve that. Actually, this would help them not be so dense as well, since the butter is retained in the scone. One other thing to try is to go by temperature with an instant read thermometer, and when the inside reaches 195 degrees F, then turn on the broiler for a bit to brown on top if it's still light. Making sure you bake them to an internal temp of 200 F will help to make sure they don't dry out.

Thanks for all the help.

My brain just wasn't firing on all cylinders yesterday. Even after writing that I suspected I had bad baking powder, it didn't occur to me that you can test baking powder. Sure enough, it was almost completely dead. A tablespoon served up a few tepid bubbles and that was it.

I might make them again right away to see the difference. I'll need to gift most of the results, though I'm sure no one will complain.

I did make them again right away, with fresh baking powder. They came out fine, with the proper texture. They did still need a little extra cooking time and I took the advice to briefly broil for color.

Thanks again for the advice.