Rich Cream Scones

RICH CREAM SCONES (This recipe was clipped from the Virginian Pilot newspaper.)

Makes 12
1cup cake flour (not self-rising)
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling and cutting
l/2 cup sugar, plus more for sprinkling
2 teaspoons baking powder
l/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 sticks cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 1/4 cups cold heavy cream, plus more for brushing
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Sift together flours, sugar, baking powder, baking
soda and 3/4 teaspoon salt in a large bowl. Cut in
butter with a pastry blender or rub in with your
fingers. (The largest pieces should be the size of
small peas.) With your fingertips, flatten butter
pieces into small disks. Cover with plastic wrap,
and refrigerate until butter is very firm, about 20
minutes.

Combine cream and vanilla in a small bowl, and
stir into flour mixture with a wooden spoon until
almost absorbed and dough just comes together.

Turn out dough onto a lightly floured work surface;
roll out into an 8-by-10-inch rectangle. With a
short side facing you, fold rectangle into thirds,
as you would a letter. Rotate dough a quarter turn
clockwise. Repeat rolling out, folding and
rotating dough two more times.

With floured hands, pat out dough to a 1 1/4inch
thickness, and cut out as many rounds as
possible with a floured 2 1/4-inch round biscuit
cutter. Gather scraps, re-roll once, and cut out
more rounds.

Place scones 2 inches apart on parchment-lined
baking sheets. Brush tops with cream, and
sprinkle with sugar.

Bake until golden brown, 18 to 20 minutes, rotating
sheets halfway through. Let cool on sheets.

Serve warm or at room temperature.

So I did try this recipe, but of course I didn't follow it exactly. What would be the fun of that? First of all, I didn't flatten butter pieces into small disks or put the dough in the refrigerator for 20 minutes. I had a little girl singing "scones, scones, scones" so that wasn't going to work. Seriously, the word scones was uttered no fewer than 84 times throughout the course of making the dough. The second problem arose when the dough wasn't actually dough but a dry crumbly mess. No worries, my solution was to keep adding cream. At two cups of cream the dough worked just fine. I used a glass dipped in flour in lieu of a biscuit cutter. Do lots of people really own a special biscuit cutting device? I really just rolled out the dough until it was +/- 1/4 inch thick and away I went. I did brush cream on the top (using my fingers since I have no barbecue brush and using a blush brush seemed too outlandish) and some table sugar. Rock sugar would've been better, but it was not residing in my pantry. All in all, they turned out okay. The good news is, with two cups of cream in the dough, they lasted a week without a hint of dryness, and durable baked goods are plus in my book!

I tried this recipe a week later but changed it up to make cinnamon, nutmeg, caramel scones. Adding two teaspoons of cinnamon and a teaspoon of nutmeg (approximately, since I really just dumped some in from the jars) worked just fine. Cutting up the Kraft caramels into quarters and dumping them in to the mix was not. They dripped out of the scones and gobbed onto the pan where they proceeded to burn into a hybrid caramel mixture that could replace steel in modern day building materials. One of my testers suggested more cinnamon and maybe toffee chips instead. To that I said "Dad, do you want to make them?" He smirked and drank his coffee.

I have a Moroccan spiced beef in acorn squash recipe that I have been afraid to attempt. Hopefully I will get to it this week. That acorn squash is blocking my access to the middle shelf of the refrigerator! A final note, I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to take the stove burner covers off all of the burners before using the stove. I did remember to do this while cooking breakfast this morning. A good thing too, since I attempted to cook pancakes on one burner not realizing I flipped the back one on in lieu of the front. It only took a couple of minutes of the pancake not cooking and nearly burning myself on the hot burner to mess with the pancake to correct the error. See, challenged.