Monday, May 10, 2010

Make It Yourself Monday

Simple Homemade Buttermilk Scones

I had a crazy busy weekend so this is a repost from about a year ago. This is a basic and fairly healthy scone recipe. I look at it as a starting point. Feel free to add ingredients like coconut, different dried or frozen berries or nuts.


I love scones, but for years was intimidated to try making them mostly because I don't have a pastry blender to cut in the butter. One day I decided to try using the potato masher instead of the pastry blender to cut in the cold butter. To my surprise, they were super easy to make, and the potato masher worked great!


Buttermilk Currant Scones

2 c. flour
1/4 c. sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. finely shredded orange peel
1/4 tsp. salt
1/3 c. cold butter
1 beaten egg
**1/2 c. buttermilk
1/4 c. currants or raisins
2 tsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. finely shredded orange peel
1 Tbsp. milk

1. Stir together flour, sugar, baking power, orange peel, baking soda, and salt. Using a pastry blender, cut in butter till mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

2. In another bowl, combine egg, buttermilk and currants. Add egg mixture all at once to dry mixture. Using a fork, stir just til moistened.

3. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Quickly kneed dough for 10-12 strokes or till dough is nearly smooth. Pat dough into a 7 inch circle and cut into wedges. (see note below)

To save clean-up time, I mix/kneed the dough in the same bowl I mixed it in, and then form it into about 3/4 - 1 inch thick round circle on the cookie sheet and cut it into triangles using a pizza cutter. I hate cleaning dough off my counters, so this saves me a lot of clean up time.


4. Arrange on your cookie sheet and cook for 12 minutes at 400 degrees or until lightly browned.


Topping
There are lots of different things you can use to top the scones. My favorite is before baking, brush the tops of the scones with cream and sprinkle Sugar In The Raw on top. A few other ideas:

Combine 2 tsp. sugar and 1/4 tsp. orange peel.
Brush wedges with 1 Tbsp. milk (before cooking them) and sprinkle the sugar mixture on top.

OR

Simple Frosting:
1/2 c. powdered sugar
1/8 tsp. vanilla (I add almond extract because I like it better)
1 1/2 tsp. milk


Okay, so I'm not a very good food photographer. Acutally, I'm terrible. But I promise these are much better than they look!

**I never have buttermilk on hand so I just make my own by adding about 1 tablespoon of vinegar to close to 1/2 cup of milk (so that together they equal 1/2 c.).

One other tip, the dough freezes great. While you are making a batch, make up an extra one, slice the dough into the triangles and freeze. I pop them in the oven still frozen and add a minute or two of cooking time. There's no better way to start the day than with a freshly made scone and a cup of coffee!

Erika

5 comments:

Saving 4 My Family said...

Erika thanks for posting this recipe! You know I love these scones.

Christina :-)

Saving 4 My Family said...

Christina, if you make them, I highly recommed adding toasted coconut to the mix. This batch is soooo good and I made them 3 days ago! Such an easy breakfast.

Erika

ya ya's mom said...

these were yummy!!! instead of currants i used a cup of blueberries and instead of orange rind i used lemon rind and i only had 1 cup white flour so i used that and 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour. DELICIOUS! thanks!!!! luv your blog!

Saving 4 My Family said...

I'm glad you liked them! That's what I love about the recipe. Every time I make them, I change it up and add something different and every time they come out great!

Erika

Anonymous said...

I just made these tonight. They were going to be for breakfast but I don't have enough now. =) They were great! I used all whole wheat pastry flour and used blueberries. Thank you!