Blueberry scones

Just a quick post with a link to some nice blueberry scones, and some other wonderful blueberry recipes.

(Le petite brioche is just an excellent baking blog all around). I'll post a picture if I remember!

Saturday morning business meeting

You gotta bribe 'em to make them come at 9 a.m. on a Saturday.

Mango Scones with aronia berries

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons chilled unsalted butter, diced

1 cup aronia berries, plumped and sugared

1/2 cup half and half
1 mango, mashed
1 large egg
1 tablespoon vanilla extract or one vanilla bean, scraped
1/4 cup honey

Preheat oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheets with parchment.

Sift flour, sugar, baking powder, orange zest and salt into large bowl. Add butter and cut in with a knife, pastry blender or your fingers until it resembles a coarse meal. Plump the raisins in a half cup of water (1 minutes in the microwave). Drain and stir into flour mixture.

Whisk mango, cream, egg, vanilla, and honey in a small bowl until thoroughly blended. Add egg mixture to flour mixture; stir just until combined. Mix together with a fork until blended (do not overmix). Scoop out about a tablespoon size.  Place scones on prepared baking sheet, about an inch apart.

Bake scones until golden, about 12-14 minutes. Makes about 20 to 24 scones. Serve warm with butter and honey.

I used the cookbook, but you can google it too

Marvelous scone recipe in The Vegetarian Epicure! If you don't have this book, you should.

Cinnamon scones

Making early morning scones while watching the Ladies Short at the World Figure Skating Championships.

Flaky cinnamon scones
adapted from My Favorite Things

Scones

2 3/4 cups Flour
1 T baking powder

1 t baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup half and half

1/3 cup honey
6 T cup cold butter, cut into pats
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Filling
3 tablespoons butter, melted

1/3 cup brown sugar

 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon 

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Work in the butter just until the mixture is unevenly crumbly;  whisk liquid ingredients together, add to flour mixture. Stir until moistened; careful not to handle the dough too much to keep it flaky.

Lay the dough on a well floured surface (dough will be sticky so make sure it's well-floured) and pat into a 9" square, about 3/4" thick. Make sure the surface underneath the dough is very well floured. If necessary, use a giant spatula (or the biggest spatula you have) to lift the square, and sprinkle more flour underneath.
 

Mix the filling, then spread it over the dough. Fold each edge into the center, so you have a seam in the middle. Press it back to 3/4" thick and repeat along the other axis.  Gently roll or pat it into a 12" square and cut into about 15 2x4" (or so) rectangles.

Tip from My Favorite Things: For best texture and highest rise, place the pan of scones in the freezer for 30 minutes, uncovered. While the scones are chilling, preheat the oven to 425°F.

Bake the scones for 16  minutes, or until they're golden brown. Remove the pan from the oven, and allow the scones to cool  on the baking sheet.

The car is not a food storage unit

Only a cook would see beauty in this

My daughter bought a banana at the rink's snack bar and then left it in the car. It was a lovely shade of greenish black after a couple of days in the cold.  But, waste not want not!

Banana Nut Scones
2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons chilled unsalted butter, diced

1/3 cup sour cream
1 overripe banana, mashed
1 large egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 cup honey

1/4 cup crushed walnuts (optional) (Not Really)

Preheat oven to 400F

In a large bowl, mix together dry ingredients and cut butter into dry mixture using a pastry cutter or two knives. Mixture should resemble coarse crumbs. In a separate bowl, beat the liquid ingredients until well mixed and fold into dry ingredients.  Fold in the nuts. You may need to knead it lightly to moisten it entirely. Dough will be sticky.

Spoon onto a parchment lined cookie sheet using either soup spoons (large scones) or teaspoons (small scones). Bake at 400F for 10 to 12 minutes for small scones, 12 to 15 for larger ones.

Much prettier

Too much controversy, I'll just make my own

Girls Scouts are a paramilitary organization! Girl Scouts are a Tool of the Librul Left! Girl Scouts USA is an evil cabal enslaving millions of helpless children!

Jeez, I just want my cookies.*

Homemade “Thin Mints”.
adapted from a comment in Spoonfed Blog

For the cookies:
1 2/3 cups flour
3/4 cup + 3 T unsweetened cocoa
1/4 tsp salt
3/8 tsp baking soda
1 3/4 sticks butter
1/2 c honey
2 Tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 tsp mint extract

Mix together dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, cream butter and honey, then add milk, vanilla, and mint. Slowly add the dry ingredients while beating. Once the mixture is well mixed (it will be fairly sticky) flour your hands and then form it into a ball. Roll the dough into a 1 1/2″ diameter log, wrap in wax paper, and chill for at least 2 hours. Slice the dough into 1/4" rounds and bake for 12-15 minutes on a parchment lined baking sheet at 350F.

The original recipe called for a cup of sugar; I substituted honey. If you use sugar, you will need to adjust the dry ingredients for slightly smaller quantities and increase the milk to 3 T. Using honey for the sweetener will make the dough sticky. Before placing the dough on the wax paper, dust it lightly with flour, and make sure the dough gets a light dusting as you roll. Once it's cold it handles fine.

For the coating:
1/2 pound semisweet chocolate or semisweet melting dots
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 T mint extract

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler, stir in the vanilla and mint. Dip the cooled cookies into the chocolate and place them on a cold wax paper-lined cookie sheet (this will keep the bottoms neat) and put the sheet into the fridge to help the coating set, which only takes a few minutes.

I tried a chocolate glaze with unsweetened bakers chocolate, because that's what I had, but it didn't set, was more like an icing. I try to do everything the hard way. Don't get fancy unless you know what you're doing (unlike me), just buy the melting dots.

There was some leftover glaze, so we mixed it with milk and made hot chocolate! (Then we had cookies and hot chocolate for dinner. What can I say.)


* Seriously, commercial Girl Scout cookies are a natural foodie's nightmare. Don't buy the cookies, but do make a direct donation to the cookie sale (important for the individual troop--they need to demonstrate participation in order to get other benefits) and write to your local council and GSUSA about retooling the recipe to reflect current thinking about healthy eating and sustainable practices (i.e. get rid of the palm oil, the beet sugar, and the toxic additives.) 

Frozen raspberries

When I was a child, raspberries were one of those things with a very narrow window. You could buy them in July, and that was about it. I don't recall being able to buy them frozen at the market like you can now, and my very urbanized mother would never have thought of buying them and storing them in a basement deep freeze. No one we knew, even the most conspicuous consumers, had a basement deep freeze.

When I started on preserving a few years ago, I was skeptical of the idea of freezing fruit--if you wanted fruit in midwinter, it seemed to me, to be absolutely pure, then making jam was the way to go. And, frankly, you could make this recipe using jam as well, it would be delicious.

But all the same, I'm glad I decided not to be so pure.

Raspberry twirl scones
2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon lemon zest
3 tablespoons chilled unsalted butter, diced

1/3 cup sour cream
raspberry juice (drained raspberries)
1 large egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 cup honey

1 egg white, whisked with 1 teaspoon sugar

2 cups fresh or frozen raspberries, drained

Preheat oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheets with parchment.

Whisk flour, sugar, baking powder, zest and salt in large bowl. Add butter and cut in with a knife, pastry blender or your fingers until it resembles a coarse meal.

Whisk sour cream, egg, vanilla, and honey in a small bowl until thoroughly blended. Add egg mixture to flour mixture; stir just until combined. Gather dough into ball and knead just enough to make the dough a solid mass. (If you knead it too much, you'll lose the flakiness that makes scones so good.)  Roll out dough on floured surface in a slab about 8x12". It should be about 1/2- 3/4 inch thick.  For larger scones, roll it on the 8" axis, for smaller, on the 12" axis.

Paint the slab with the eggwhite/sugar mix, then spread the fruit on it in a single layer. Gently roll it into a tight log, then slice into 2" pieces. Place scones on prepared baking sheet, about an inch apart. You can brush the tops with any left over egg white and sprinkle with a tiny bit of sugar if you want a little bit of a crunchy glaze. Bake until golden, about 20 minutes. Makes about 16 to 20 small scones or 8 to 10 large ones.