I'm Back! And the Daring Bakers Make Scones!

Hey everybody. Remember me? I know it's been rather a long time (scarily long, in fact. I'm afraid to look at the date of my last post). Life's been busy with grad school applications, fellowship applications, grad school applications, moving to California, grad school applications, a 10-day trip to Israel, grad school applications, holidays, and grad school applications. Luckily, grad school apps are in, and interviews are set! I do have one more fellowship application to complete, and I'm also studying Hebrew like mad in preparation for my interviews (since there are placement tests at the same time). By April, I should have a much better idea of what's on the fall horizon.

I've completely fallen off of the "Daring Bakers" bandwagon and missed not one but two awesome challenges-- Filipino desserts in November and sourdough bread in December. I was determined to squeeze back in this month!  (In fact, one of my New Year's Resolutions was to blog more. I've failed 'til now, but now that I'm settled in Berkeley I intend to blog regularly once again.)


Audax Artifex was our January 2012 Daring Bakers’ host. And worked tirelessly to master light and fluffy scones (a/k/a biscuits) to help us create delicious and perfect batches in our own kitchens! (Mine, alas, did not turn out delicious and perfect.)

I'll be the first to admit that my "Scones" did not turn out as I'd hoped. I'm still getting used to the Berkeley kitchen, I didn't "triple sift" my dry ingredients, and the baking powder and soda that I used were not the freshest. I also handled the dough too much--don't do that when you make yours!

It's actually funny to see these called "scones" as I associate scones with being at least slightly sweet and usually involving cinnamon and fruit of some sort. What I made yesterday I would call a strange biscuit/scone hybrid. These were certainly not the light-as-air-and-made-to-be-slathered-with-butter-and-honey southern biscuits of my childhood summer camps. Nor were they the pretty-dense-and-flavorful-and-lovely-with-jam scones from my mom's oven. Still, I enjoyed making them, and if they didn't rise as much as I would have liked, they still tasted nice warm from the oven, dotted with butter and raspberry jam. I'll try another batch in the near future, with new baking soda and powder, and see what happens.

Sifting ingredients

The full recipe, with detailed instructions for everything, can be found here. I basically did the "cream" variation, replacing the milk with half and half that was about to go bad and adding a bit of baking soda.

Here's my recipe:

Ingredients (for 7-8 scones-double or triple if you like)
-1 cup all purpose flour
-2 tsp. FRESH baking powder
-1/4 tsp. baking soda
-1/4 tsp. salt
-2 TBL cold butter
-about 1/2 cup half and half


Procedure
-Preheat the oven to 475°F. 
-Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together into a medium mixing bowl.
-Cut the butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles coarse sand. 

Butter "cut-into" the dries.

-Add the half and half almost all at once, reserving a bit that you shouldn't add unless it's too dry. Mix quickly until the dries are moistened. 

-Dump the dough onto a lightly floured surface and gently pat or roll it to about 3/4" thickness. Use a biscuit cutter if you have one, or a peanut butter jar lid, or a knife to shape the biscuits. Set the cut biscuits into a greased baking pan, with the edges of the biscuits just touching. 

-Bake biscuits for about 10 minutes, checking after 7-8. They should puff nicely and turn golden. 

-Cool for a bit, then butter up and enjoy!