Week 21: Mother's Day Scones

I still remember the first time I made scones. I was 9 years old and a teacher at school was retiring. Because she was English, another teacher had the idea for us to host an English afternoon tea for her, complete with scones of course. She had asked for a few volunteers to help her out in my school's small kitchen and I was eager to get involved despite not even knowing what a scone was. Clearly I was an adventurous baker from a young age.

As a product of a Harry Potter-filled childhood, I am a fan of all things English, scones included. I don't quite know why, but I also think that there's some quite motherly about them. Perhaps the way the often come alongside a warm and soothing cup of tea, just like my own mother? This year, I baked up some in both cranberry and chocolate-orange (ok, maybe these were more for me) varieties to say thank you before we spent some quality time at a local farmer's market.

Mother's Day Scones

Yield: 8

• 1-1/4 cup flour
• 1/3 cup sugar
• Pinch salt
• 1-3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 cup butter (cold)
• 1/3 cup buttermilk + a little more

For cranberry scones: 1/2 cup chopped fresh or frozen cranberries

For Chocolate-orange scones: 1/3 cup chocolate chips, 3 tablespoons marmalade, orange zest

Egg wash:

• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon milk

Icing:

• 1/4 icing sugar
• Water as needed

1. Preset oven to 375F
2. Mix flour, salt, and baking powder
3. Add butter and mix with a pastry blender (a few butter knives work too)
4. Add in either the cranberries or chocolate chips/marmalade (the zest is for later)
5. Mix in 1/3 cup butter milk to form dough, as more as needed
6. Form dough into an 8" circle and cut into 8 slices
7. Brush with egg/milk mixture and bake for 12-13 minutes
8. Allow to cool slightly and drizzle with icing, sprinkle with zest if making chocolate orange scones
9. Serve warm

How did you say thanks to Mom this year?

Week 8: Cranberry Orange Scones

Cranberries were on sale a couple weeks ago and I thought they could serve double duty as ingredients for some more scones and perhaps a new smoothie recipe. For some reason, roommate AG forgot what scones were and I realised that I really don't have  better description for them other than: "You know, they're triangular, and flaky, and Starbucks sells them?". Which apparently was not descriptive enough.

I had taken the night off from campaigning in the school elections, which I'll regret if not enough people choose my name on the ballot a week from now. But from my experience of when I was elected as Grade 5 class president, campaigning breaks are okay; especially if they're taken for baking.

Last time I made scones I mentioned that I would like to try them with whole wheat flour if I had had any on hand, and now that I do, whole wheat scones it is!  This recipe is a little different from last time  as I think they ended up too moist. I've also replaced the lemon zest with orange since I didn't have any lemons on hand. Noticing that I didn't have this recipe stored anywhere else but the blog itself, I had to follow the recipe here and noticed that grey text is incredibly hard to read so I've changed it all to black to make all your lives just a bit easier, you're welcome.

Week 4: Lemon Cranberry Scones

Scones may just be my favourite coffee shop indulgence. They’re flaky, buttery and available in just about any flavour. The problem is, they are also often absolute calorie/fat/sugar bombs, which I can do without. So I thought I would try to create a better scone! One that would taste like the 500 calorie evil things sold by an unnamed ubiquitous Seattle-based coffee shop, but less evil.

 

I’ve replaced the usual buttermilk with low-fat plain yogurt and added in ground flax seed for an omega-3 and fibre boost, along with fresh cranberries and a bit of lemon zest for some antioxidant punch. Unfortunately I didn’t have any whole wheat flour around, or else I would have tossed in some of that as well.

 

The recipe is loosely based on this one as I needed a basic scone recipe to work around. Mine baked much quicker than the recipe prescribed so they turned out a bit more browned that I would have wished, so I’ve reduced the baking time below.  Also, even though I’ve made these as Lemon Cranberry scones, the recipe could easily be adapted to make blueberry, or raisin, or orange, or chocolate, or… anything you want to toss in, scones.