The Scone

People who know me know that I just don’t bake. It’s not my thing. Occasionally I’ll find something that I want to bake and try it out, fail miserably and avoid those recipes at all costs. But, just as occasionally, I'll fixate on a recipe, get up the courage to try it, not eat all the dough before I bake it ( I love dough, could be the reason for failures but we won't go there) and it works. Happened with biscotti in 2003.

Recently my fixation landed on scones. Most likely this came from a long stretch of watching old Masterpiece Theatre shows combined with a great recipe from Heidi at 101 Cookbooks. She called it her Mega Scone. Brilliant. Instead of spending time cutting the dough in small scones, and giving me an opportunity to test the dough, she offers the alternative of the monster scone that you cut before serving.

Ok. The dough IS fabulous.

It's fast, it's easy and it works. Even for me.

The Scone

adapted from 101 Cookbooks' Raspberry Mega Scone Recipe

4 cups all purpose flour
3 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 stick cold butter, cut in smallish pieces
¾ cup vanilla sugar (I used this because I put leftover vanilla beans in my sugar at Thanksgiving and it’s all I have)
1-¼ cups vanilla soy or regular whole milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
Zest of one lemon
¾ cup orange marmalade, raspberry preserves, strawberry jam whichever you like.

Preheat oven to 375.

Line cookie sheet with parchment paper. Combine flour, baking powder and salt in food processor. Turn it on, and pulse the butter pieces into the flour til it looks like little pebbles. Doesn’t take long to do this at all. Add sugar, milk, vanilla and lemon zest. Pulse it til dough comes together and stop pulsing immediately. Heidi says to add a little more cream if the mix is too dry.

Have a floured piece of parchment paper on counter or use a silpat if you have one. Put dough on it and cut into two equal sized pieces. Roll out into a square, if you can get it into a square, you’re a better roller than me. I was a rectangle the whole time. You want it to be about a half inch thick. Sprinkle with flour if it gets sticky. Take the marmalade or jams and spread on to the dough. Fold the left side in towards the middle and then the right side in on top so you have a long scone thing.

Do the other piece of dough the same way.
Brush the top of the dough with a bit of melted butter.
Bake 25 minutes to when they are golden where they touch the pan.
Let cool and slice into however big a piece you want.

These are even better the second day. If they last that long.

The Scone