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| (oops - this scone collapsed because I cut it too tall!) |
Does this word elicit fear and dread, of bricks turned as heavy and dense as building material? Ever think that scones can't march past the borders of sweet dried fruits, or that they are simply fruitcakes with a different color? Do you find that eating a scone usually means you ingest about a stick of butter, or a jar of clotted cream, to coat each bite just to give it some flavor?
Then come with me on a little journey, to some textural and palate-ial satisfaction. This morning, a bake sale to accompany the magic show taking place at the kids' preschool called on me to put on the baker's hat. I sent in some savory scones to stand alongside the sweet bites on the table, and they did not disappoint. As my friend Jess would attest, the recipe for scones that we both follow (from Cook's Illustrated "Best Recipes" cookbook) can be completed from beginning to end within about 30 minutes. The recipe has become one of my standbys for a quick delicious treat, and I do make it often, both savory and sweet.
Make sure to have your ingredients lined up - and before you know it, you'll be churning out delicious scones with ease and flare, adding your own ideas for flavorants, and your house will smell delectable. And - they won't be bricks.
Keep in mind the following tips as you make scones, as the process is combination of those for making cakes and making pie crusts:
1. Like cake mixing, mix the dry ingredients first, followed by addition of the fat and wet ingredients. I usually keep a recipe's worth of a batch in the pantry on hand to cut down some of the production time and to make scones on a moment's (or the kids' or Hubby's, whichever comes first) whim.
2. A food processor is particularly helpful, to both ease the mixing process and to help distribute the butter through the flour evenly (this is also the method I use for making pie crust). Pulse the mix/food process setting on the food processor, so that you don't overheat the mixing and run the risk of melting the butter.
3. Mix the ingredients the way you would to make a flaky pie crust: coat small butter particles with flour, and don't overmix. Keep the ingredients cold, particularly the butter and the cream, so that you don't make a homogenous block that turns into a brick. If you start melting a good deal of the butter by overmixing the ingredients in the food processor, you'll end up releasing the water in the butter. Water will bind to the flour, and you'll end up with a greasy, dense, heavy mess that will not hold together and will not yield light, fluffy scones. The key here is to keep the butter particles intact, and not let them melt, so that they will do the melting in the oven where they will create little pockets in your scones - and yield light flakiness.
4. If you're making the scones on a countertop, a bench scraper will be invaluable to not only clean up your counter surface, but it will help you scrape together last scone bits left from the cutting process to make just one more scone at the end of the cutting process (so that your warm hands don't end up melting the worked-over dough into a dense brick).
So keep some space in the refrigerator, grab a food processor, and get ready to enjoy some most excellent scones (and wonderful aroma throughout the the house).
Cream Scones
Ingredients:
2c flour
1T baking powder
3T sugar
1/2t salt
5T butter, cut into pea-sized pieces
1c heavy cream
Flavorants used in this morning's first (!) batch (we came home and made another batch, with parmesan, mozzarella, chives, and ham)
1c total cheddar and monterey jack cheese
3T fresh chives, finely chopped
Baking sheet
Parchment paper
1.5" to 3" biscuit cutter
Method:1. Preheat oven to 430. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Mix together in the food processor the dry ingredients.
3. Place flavorants in a large bowl. Keep in the fridge if you'd like.
4. Dot the butter on top of the dry ingredients. Pulse about 5 times, 2-3 seconds per pulse, until the mixture resembles cornmeal.
5. Add the heavy cream to the food processor. Mix until just combined. The dough will be sticky.
6. Add the dough to flavorants bowl, and mix well as best you can with a spatula. If the fixture is too heavy to mix with a spatula, mix by hand to finish the mixing process, folding the dough on itself about 4-5 times to help build layers and to make sure the flavorants are well mixed into the dough.
7. Press dough into a round 1" thick if you're making small scones (about 1.5"-2" diameter), or about 1.5" thick if you're making big scones (about 2"-3" diameter) or leaving as wedges cut from the dough round. Scrape up the round onto parchment paper, wrap. Let rest in the fridge about 10 minutes.
6. Bring out the chilled dough round, and use the biscuit cutter to cut round scones. Set 1.5" apart on the baking sheet. (Alternatively, leave the dough round, and score wedges from the round).7. Bake immediately in the preheated oven, about 10 minutes for small scones, 12 minutes for large scones, or 15 minutes for the large dough round of wedges, until browned on top.
8. Once baking is done, let scones cool about 10-15 minutes on the tray before eating.
I've read that you can make this recipe ahead of time, even up to the point where you are letting the dough round chill in the fridge, and let it rest overnight for fast processing in the morning in time for breakfast. I've not yet done this, as this recipe is fast enough to be able to let us have scones *almost* immediately in the morning - but I do plan to try it sometime to see if the baking powder decreases in its ability to let these scones rise.
