A Kitchen Covered In Scones

This post is about two weeks overdue, dear readers, because I've spent the last two weeks experimenting in the Scone Zone.

I've baked approximately six batches of scones using the same basic recipe, and all with delicious but varying results. My first and last batches, vanilla-almond cherry scones and lemon scones, were my favorites and both involved slight departures from this base recipe:

Ingredients

• 2 C All-purpose flour
• 1/2 C Brown Sugar
• 2 t Baking Powder
• 1/2 t Salt
• 1/2 C Dried Fruit, diced into 1/2 inch cubes, if needed
• 1 1/2 C Heavy Cream
• 1/2 t Almond extract
• 1/2 t Vanilla extract
• 1 egg, beaten for glaze
• 1 T granulated white sugar

For instructions click here.

For the preferred vanilla-almond batch, I used bread flour instead of all-purpose, which resulted in a drier dough. The dryness of the dough was a bit worrisome when I started, and I had day terrors of my scones coming out of the oven moisture-sucking fiends. In actuality it just made the dough easier to handle, and my scones were delicious little sweethearts, instead of evil demon pastries.

The preferred lemon scones were as adventurous as I got with the scones, and easily the most beautiful things ever to come out of my oven. This time, I had run out of heavy whipping cream and had to substitute regular milk for the last half cup. But then my dough was FAR too wet, so on a whim I dumped another fourth a cup of flour in the mix. The extra fourth a cup of flour really didn't do much in the way of damage control, but this batch resulted in a far puffier, golden pastry than any of my other batches. Maybe my scones weren't really "scones" in the traditional sense of… scone, but they were quite beautiful, if I do say so myself.

I think my adventures in with scones will continue for a while. I might even break out the food processor -- the most annoying appliance to clean -- for some real scone dough, complete with cold butter.

In the meantime, do you all have any suggestions? What's your go-to scone or morning pastry recipe?

For scone perfection you might also check out 's website and blog. This Potomac chef got some rave reviews on her cream scone recipe, which I hope to try soon.  

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