Rosemary Cherry Walnut Scones
I baked a batch of impossible scones this morning. I say impossible, because I had plenty of dry ingredients and things to add flavor, but I've been broke and inventively working through my pantry staples for the past two weeks, which means I've been out of things like milk and butter for a good 10 days now. (Not that I use much butter these days anyway.) Oh, and I was out of oils other than olive and dark sesame, neither of which would work well in a sweet scone (though probably would be fine in appropriately-flavored savory ones.) Every scone recipe I've looked at calls for copious amounts of both butter and milk/heavy cream/half-and-half/sour cream. Even the vegan ones call for the vegan equivalents of these things, and/or canola/vegetable oil. What's a bake-by-the-seat-of-her-pants/use-what's-on-hand baker to do? Improvise, of course.
I also had a bunch of pie cherries from the farmers' market, all pitted and halved and waiting in the freezer since June to be used, and I wanted to showcase them. The other problem was that most cherry scone recipes I found called for dried cherries. I did find a couple that used fresh cherries, and I settled on this recipe as a template, which is sort of funny since that blogger was riffing her own mods off of somebody else's template recipe. Anyway.
I subbed bacon fat for the butter, cause I have like 3 lbs of bacon fat in the fridge, from the delicious Crack Bacon of the Gods. It's good stuff. What to do about the 1 cup of sour cream, though? Hmm. I suspected the fact of it being sour cream was important because of the way the acids in soured dairy products interact with the leavening agents for extra lift. I had a mostly-empty container of plain yogurt in the fridge, which miraculously was still good, and I managed to scrape up about 2 Tbsp. from that. I had a tin of evaporated milk in the cupboard, gods only know why, so I popped that open and filled in the remainder of the cup with that. In retrospect, I probably could have used less evaporated milk, since it made things wetter than sour cream or yogurt would have done, and I had to add an extra half-cup of flour to the batter to get it even manageable. In addition to the cherries, I put in about 1/3 cup of chopped toasted walnuts and 1 Tbsp of chopped fresh rosemary from my garden. After the scone batter was cut into wedges and placed on the baking sheet, I mixed the leftover egg white with a bit of the evaporated milk and brushed that on top of each scone, then sprinkled on cinnamon sugar and granulated sugar. Into the oven they went for 15 minutes.
The result? Delicious. Perhaps even impossibly delicious. They rose beautifully, the texture is tender and lofty, the base flavor is slightly sweet but not too sweet, and the cherries and rosemary just add little pings of tartness that work together beautifully. Even the cinnamon sugar on top is tasty but not overdone. Can't really taste the bacon fat at all, though it could be masquerading in with the rest of the mellow sweetness.
I had one for breakfast, then packed the rest up after they'd cooled to take to Summerland-- one will be an offering tonight, the rest will be shared with grovemates for breakfast tomorrow.
After the scone impossibility, I got myself all groomed and went off to a job interview, which went fairly well, I thought. Came back, packed up food to take for the trip tonight, and then came into work. Heading out for Summerland in an hour or so-- it'll just be Explore and me, as Jerry realized he'd double-booked against a prior commitment, which is too bad.
I also had a bunch of pie cherries from the farmers' market, all pitted and halved and waiting in the freezer since June to be used, and I wanted to showcase them. The other problem was that most cherry scone recipes I found called for dried cherries. I did find a couple that used fresh cherries, and I settled on this recipe as a template, which is sort of funny since that blogger was riffing her own mods off of somebody else's template recipe. Anyway.
I subbed bacon fat for the butter, cause I have like 3 lbs of bacon fat in the fridge, from the delicious Crack Bacon of the Gods. It's good stuff. What to do about the 1 cup of sour cream, though? Hmm. I suspected the fact of it being sour cream was important because of the way the acids in soured dairy products interact with the leavening agents for extra lift. I had a mostly-empty container of plain yogurt in the fridge, which miraculously was still good, and I managed to scrape up about 2 Tbsp. from that. I had a tin of evaporated milk in the cupboard, gods only know why, so I popped that open and filled in the remainder of the cup with that. In retrospect, I probably could have used less evaporated milk, since it made things wetter than sour cream or yogurt would have done, and I had to add an extra half-cup of flour to the batter to get it even manageable. In addition to the cherries, I put in about 1/3 cup of chopped toasted walnuts and 1 Tbsp of chopped fresh rosemary from my garden. After the scone batter was cut into wedges and placed on the baking sheet, I mixed the leftover egg white with a bit of the evaporated milk and brushed that on top of each scone, then sprinkled on cinnamon sugar and granulated sugar. Into the oven they went for 15 minutes.
The result? Delicious. Perhaps even impossibly delicious. They rose beautifully, the texture is tender and lofty, the base flavor is slightly sweet but not too sweet, and the cherries and rosemary just add little pings of tartness that work together beautifully. Even the cinnamon sugar on top is tasty but not overdone. Can't really taste the bacon fat at all, though it could be masquerading in with the rest of the mellow sweetness.
I had one for breakfast, then packed the rest up after they'd cooled to take to Summerland-- one will be an offering tonight, the rest will be shared with grovemates for breakfast tomorrow.
After the scone impossibility, I got myself all groomed and went off to a job interview, which went fairly well, I thought. Came back, packed up food to take for the trip tonight, and then came into work. Heading out for Summerland in an hour or so-- it'll just be Explore and me, as Jerry realized he'd double-booked against a prior commitment, which is too bad.