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In the Kitchen with Raspberry Scones
updated: Nov 13, 2010, 9:00 AM
By Leah Etling
This column has been hiatus for several months, but now it's back and ready for a winter of deliciousness. I'll be preparing my first-ever Thanksgiving turkey in a few weeks, so there seemed no better time to take the laptop into the kitchen and start getting flour and butter all over it. If you've got a recipe or topic idea to share, don't forget that you can always post it in the comments section or email leah@edhat.com
Today's recipe is for raspberry scones. It is inspired by the birthday of my grandmother Doris, who is on the oatmeal-daily diet for breakfast under orders from her doctor. She has high cholesterol and is awfully good about eating that bland oatmeal every single morning. (I tried it for a week while staying with her and promptly gave up. Maybe we can find some ways to jazz up oats in a future column.) But in honor of her 79th year on Thursday, I decided she could break the rules for just one day and enjoy a butter/cream-rich, totally bad for you, but totally delicious, homemade scone.
Here's my No. 1 complaint about the scones I get at coffee shops: too much flour and not enough fruit. I decided to augment the raspberries called for in this recipe with a handful of still-sweet strawberries from the local Farmer's Market. (Strawberries in November… isn't living in California great?) What I found most interesting about this recipe compared to others that I've used in the past was that it called for the scones to go into the freezer for 5 minutes before being sprinkled with cream and sugar and baked. Anyone know the reasoning behind the freezer time?
Here's the recipe from chow.com
Ingredient list:
• 2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
• 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest (from 1 medium lemon)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 8 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 stick), cut into 1/2-inch cubes and then chilled
• 3/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon heavy cream
• 1 cup frozen raspberries, kept in the freezer until ready to use
Process
-Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, lemon zest, salt in a bowl. Cut in the butter. (If you have a fancy pastry mixer you can use that, but I don't own one.)
-Add the cream. Dough will be rough and is best hand kneaded. 10-15 crunches gets it to about the right consistency. After it's close to sticking turn it out onto a floured cutting board. Using a rolling pin, create a rectangular shape of dough. The dimensions with these ingredient amounts will be about 10 inches wide and six inches deep.
-Place the fruit on the rolled dough gently press it into the dough. Then cover the fruit with the dough, either by folding it over once or folding it into thirds (bring the top edge down to the bottom so you don't get fruit all over the floor.) It really doesn't matter if your shapes aren't perfect or how you do this, as long as you have enough dough to cover the fruit. Then cut the scones, shaping them as you wish. I had a few triangles but more parallelograms (There's a word that hasn't been used since middle school.)
-Place on baking sheet and then place in the freezer for 5 minutes. After they come out, use a pastry brush to coat the tops with cream and then sprinkle sugar on top. Bake in 400 degree oven for 20 minutes.
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How'd they come out? Well, I learned that the reason there probably isn't much fruit in commercial scones is because it will bleed into the flour with a higher volume of fruit. But they tasted great. Scones are best eaten fresh, so as long as you're not trying to save them for more than a few hours sogginess won't be an issue.
My grandmother said, "These are so good I'm going to eat two," so hopefully her doctor isn't reading this. Back to the oatmeal tomorrow.
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