strawberry chocolate scones

You can't have a bridal shower tea party without scones, so these are the ones that I made up for my sisters shower last weekend. My recipe is adapted from the Alice's Tea Cup version.

Chocolate Strawberry Scones
3 cups flour (I think I used 1/2 whole wheat and 1/2 unbleached all purpose)
1/3 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. salt
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 1/4 cups hulled and quartered strawberries
3/4 cup dark chocolate pieces (I used dark chocolate chips)
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
1 tsp. vanilla
heavy cream and sugar to brush and sprinkle on top

Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix together with your clean hands.

Chop up the butter.


Then work it into the dry mixture with your hands. You want to get it to the consistency of fine bread crumbs. Then I stopped taking pics for a bit, but next you want to add the strawberries and chocolate pieces and mix them in well so that they are evenly distributed throughout. Then make a well in the center of the mixture and add in the buttermilk and vanilla. Combine until the dry ingredients are all wet. DO NOT KNEAD! If you knead the dough, the scones will be tough (tough is okay if you are talking about men but not if you are talking about scones, just saying).


Then pat the dough out on a floured surface and cut into triangular pieces. Mine got a bit messy and crazy, but worked out in the end. I think I would almost rather have cut them out with my round cutter I usually use for scones. You can do what you want. Then brush the tops with a bit of cream and sprinkle with just a tiny bit of sugar and bake at 425* for about 12 minutes.

rainy morning baking

There are few things I love better than baking on a rainy morning. There is just something about rain outside that makes inside so cozy and warm. And what goes better with cozy and warm than a nice batch of freshly baked scones?

I started with a recipe from Alice's Tea Cup, a cookbook from the business of the same name in New York. My roommate got this book for Christmas, and I have been immensely enjoying it since then. Scones are one of my guilty pleasures, and I am always on the hunt for a good scone recipe. I have made their pumpkin scones a couple of times, but I decided to just use that as a starting place this morning and head off in a new direction. I guess we can call these honey applesauce spice scones.

3 cups flour (I used 2.5 of oat flour and .5 of coconut flour)
1/3 cup sugar (I omitted this because I added honey)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt (this is roughly what I put in)
ground ginger
ground cinnamon
ground nutmeg
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup applesauce
1/2 cup honey

Start by mixing the dry ingredients and then chopping up the butter and tossing it in. Work the butter into the flour mixture with your hands. I guess you can use a pastry blender here, but then you miss the experience of it. I am a tactile person, so I like feel of working the butter in with my hands. . .plus that is what the cookbook says to do. Do what you like.

Then add the honey, applesauce, and buttermilk and mix into a dough, but do not knead or overwork the dough. That will give you a tough and unpleasant scone. I ended up adding a bit of rice flour to my dough at this point because it was a little too moist. I try not to use all oat flour when baking because it is rather dense. Putting in a variety of flours seems to help with the density as well as giving it some more complex flavor. Once it is in dough form, pat it down on a floured surface and using a round cutter, cut out the scones and arrange on a baking sheet.

Fully baked and delicious scones. . .well at least I think they are delicious. . .I haven't actually tried one yet. That will be breakfast after I go for a run.

I hope you all have a lovely rainy (or sunny) morning wherever you are.