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Banana Scones

Banana Scones

My parents shop at Costco. And when I was growing up, I loved going on Costco runs (free samples, awesome pizza, and yummy berry soft serve “sundaes” that proved my little eyes were bigger than my tummy). It wasn’t until I grew up and started actually paying attention to what we were buying that I realized the ultimate Costco lesson: where are you going to store all those fruits and vegetables? And what are you going to do with them?

Banana Scones

Banana Scones

Fast forward to the phone call I got from my mom about a week before Easter. “We bought bananas at Costco (always a big mistake) and have a million about to go overripe (always the result of the big mistake). Can you come over and do something with them?”

SCONE BAKER WOMAN TO THE RESCUE!

Lemon Poppyseed Scones

Lemon Poppyseed Scones

Don’t judge me for my Easter decorations in photos that are posted after Easter. In my defense, I was inspired by Easter and spring to make these scones and made them and photographed them before Easter. So even if I didn’t post the recipe until after Easter, it is still perfectly acceptable, nay necessary, to have Easter decorations in my photos. I probably intended to post this recipe before or on Easter but was distracted by these. Have you made them yet? If you have, you can’t blame me. You completely understand.

Lemon Poppyseed Scones

Lemon Poppyseed Scones

I was never a lemon poppyseed person growing up. I think it was a combination of the poppy seeds looking like little things that should not be in baked goods, the word “seeds” being associated with savory in my head, and the episode of Mythbusters that showed that you can fail a breathalyzer test by eating a huge amount of poppyseed bagels. I’m the ultimate good girl so I probably was afraid that of what would happen if a cop happened to pull me over after the one time I would have ever eaten poppy seeds. Still have never been pulled over by a cop though so I’m just being a little overzealous.

Recipe: Orange Chocolate Chip Scones

Get ready for some Easter themed photos accompanying some Spring inspired scones. Yes, Easter was yesterday, but a holiday featuring a magical bunny, soft pastels, adorable baby animals, fun crafts, and lots and lots of chocolate and jelly beans should be celebrated year long, right? Or at least all Spring? Or at least until I run out of sunny scone recipe ideas (never going to happen I seriously have over 50 recipes lined up) and my mom puts away the Easter decorations photography props? Come on, I thought you were on my side!

Orange Chocolate Chip Scones

Orange Chocolate Chip Scones

Recipe: Chocolate Covered Pomegranate Scones

Scones–and pictures of scones–tend to evoke a happy, airy, lighthearted feeling in your day. Delicate with a touch of decadence, scones and afternoon tea are for days of sunshine and butterflies and a spring breeze and smiles.

But let’s get honest here for a minute, blog honest. Life isn’t always joyful. Days aren’t always full of sun. Lace tablecloths, embroidered napkins, and sweet cream won’t always cut it. Sometimes life is dark.

Chocolate Covered Pomegranate Scones
Chocolate Covered Pomegranate Scones

So let’s bring on the dark chocolate and the deep pomegranate for those days. Because there is a scone for every occasion and every mood. And scones help. They always help. Chocolate covered pomegranate scones most of all.

If I wasn’t an avid disliker of all things vampire (I’m looking at you Twilight), I’d make a crack about these being vampire scones, with their deep black chocolate morsels covering blood red pomegranate jelly. The photos certainly fit that style! But like I said…anti vampire…so…

Chocolate Covered Pomegranate Scones

Chocolate Covered Pomegranate Scones

Making these scones is a cinch. Basically just add chocolate covered pomegranates to my simple cream scones; eventually I’ll make a recipe with fresh pomegranate arils and various add-ins probably revolving around chocolate, but when you aren’t having the best day, you want quick and easy. Take the shortcut. I did. I don’t judge. The chocolate covered pomegranates are bigger than you’d think, so you may want to chop them up a bit before mixing them in. I chose not to and ended up with some bites of plain scone and some bites of chocolate/pomegranate chewy goodness. Either option is going to be delicious.

So when your day is a little darker than you want it to be, do something to take care of yourself and pop a tray of these in the oven.

chocolate covered pomegranate scones

Chocolate Covered Pomegranate Scones

Chocolate Covered Pomegranate Scones

ingredients

  • 200 g self raising flour
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 50 g ultrafine baking sugar
  • 150-200 mL heavy whipping cream (always start with the lower amount)
  • 1/2 cup chocolate covered pomegranate seeds, chopped or whole depending on preference
Preheat oven to 220°C (450°F). Place rack as high as possible in oven. Line a baking tray with parchment paper and set aside.
Sift flour and salt together in a medium sized mixing bowl. Add the sugar and chocolate covered pomegranate seeds, mixing until well distributed.
Add 150 mL cream then work in by hand by rubbing in the cream trying to incorporate as much air as possible until fully mixed. DO NOT OVERMIX. If the mix is too dry, now add the extra cream until the dough is wet enough to hold together.
Place dough on a heavily floured surface and knead a couple of times until relatively smooth. Pat down to desired height (we did 1 cm as usual). Cut out 5 cm circles with a crimped scone cutter and place on the baking tray. HINT: dip the cutter in flour before cutting out each scone. Knead the extras back together and repeat until most of the dough is used up.

Bake for 8-10 minutes (we did 8) until they have risen and are slightly browned around the edges and on top.

Recipes: Golden Raspberry Coconut Scones

Did you miss me? Of course you did, because everyone loves scones. So maybe it isn’t me you missed, and it’s just the scones you were pining after? Should I be concerned? Are my friends only friends with me because I bring them baked goods?!

Golden Raspberry Coconut Scones

Golden Raspberry Coconut Scones

Well, yeah I think they are, but the dictionary defines friends as “recipe taste testers”, right? Or at least that’s what all my friends tell me. I can go weeks, months, YEARS without talking to my friends, so long as when I come back I bring them yummy baked goods. Again, so they tell me through mouthfuls of scones, cookies, and cupcakes. And banana bread. Peanut butter chocolate swirled banana bread to be exact. But that’s another story and another recipe.

Why the long absence and subsequent promise to beging of forgiveness and subsequent promise to be a better friend through more frequent recipe updates? Well I made a massive career change (from science-y graduate school to artsy acting), made even more massive life changes, made some location moves (to my parents’ house sans kitchen for a few miserable months–because of the no kitchen; my parents are lovely–and then to my own apartment), and basically just took my life and shook it upside down like a bully in elementary school looking for lunch money. Unfortunately, money scones didn’t fall out. 

Golden Raspberry Coconut Scones

Golden Raspberry Coconut Scones

But I missed baking and sharing my recipes with you! So I decided to try to come back. And since berry season will be upon us before we know it, what better way to kick it off than with a hunt for golden raspberries?

Golden raspberries are like red raspberries’ shy cousin. They are less in-your-face tart and a little more delicate, but have generally the same flavor profile. And they go just as well with coconut as any summery berry! My “Berry Lady” at our local farmer’s market recommended I try them out in place of red raspberries for scones because they can be a little sturdier and hold up better to baking. She had me at “berry” though so it wasn’t a hard sell! And look how pretty and bright they came out!

Golden Raspberry Coconut Scones

Golden Raspberry Coconut Scones

You can easily sub red or black raspberries if you can’t find golden.

golden raspberry coconut scones

ingredients

  • 250g all purpose flour
  • 3/4 tsp baking soda
  • 1/4 salt
  • 50 g ultrafine baking sugar
  • 1 cup golden raspberries
  • 2/3 cup shredded coconut, sweetened
  • 150 mL whipping cream

Preheat oven to 450°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, salt, and sugar. Toss in berries and coconut.

Slowly add in whipping cream until the dough is moistened and coming together. Turn out onto a floured surface.

Pat down to desired thickness and cut out scones in desired size rounds (1 cm and 5 cm, respectively). Place on baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes. Remove to a wire rack to cool.

Golden Raspberry Coconut Scones

Golden Raspberry Coconut Scones

Recipe: White Chocolate Blueberry Scones

Yes, I realize that your favorite source for recipes, facts about afternoon tea, and tea room reviews seemingly went missing for a few weeks. I mean, not even a scone recipe? That’s like borderline as severe as the apocalypse. But as much as I apologize, I also promise that I had a good reason.

white chocolate blueberry scones

white chocolate blueberry scones

See, in addition to my job as the household’s resident Anglophile and baker, I am also an actress. Well, aspiring actress who every time she says aspiring before actress is corrected by people around her because vocabulary and commitment is very important in the industry. So I’m an actress. And pursuing acting as a career can get very time consuming, particularly when you have to commute into Hollywood for 16 straight days. Yeah that happened. It also makes one not really feel like turning on an oven. Or blogging. Or doing anything but sleeping when at home.

But I was thinking about you the whole time and feeling insanely guilty for not posting. So to make it up to you, I am posting my favorite scone recipe thusfar. 

Recipe: Triple Berry Scones

If two is better than one, than three is better than two, right? Well that answer is a resounding yes when berries are involved, that much I know! Scones with one berry (with me it’s usually strawberry)? Awesome. Scones with two berries? Amazing. But scones with three berries? Transcendent!

I’ll be honest, I really struggled with the desire to turn these into Quadruple Berry Scones. But that just seemed like a slippery slope to Bazillion Berry Scones or Scone Berries where the dough became more berry than scone. Though would that really have been a bad thing? It’d certainly make getting one of your five a day easier if all you had to do was eat a scone. Eat five scones (so not hard to do) and you’re all set for twenty four hours.

Triple Berry Scones

Triple Berry Scones

Recipe: Strawberry Cream Cheese Scones

So just in case you couldn’t tell from these, and these, I love strawberries. I really love all berries, but strawberries are my favorite. And as strawberry season begins to come to a close and I start to tear up at the prospect of months and months without this delicious berry, I decided to make another few recipes to get our final strawberry fix. Best part, scones can freeze so if you hurry up and make the scones now, you can enjoy them in the fall when everyone else is eating apples. You’ll be eating strawberry scones and gloating to yourself (not out loud since that’s not nice after all, but inside is totally okay!).

Strawberry Cream Cheese Scones

Strawberry Cream Cheese Scones

When I went to my first afternoon tea as a little girl, one of the finger sandwiches served was a strawberry cream cheese sandwich, and since it was pink and I adored pink I had to love it. Ever since, strawberry cream cheese has become one of those things I buy at the store with excitement but then rarely get around to using because I forget to buy bagels. Now, I’ll never have wasted strawberry cream cheese again because I can always make these scones! They are sooooo creamy and moist that I can’t put enough “ooooo” at the end of the “so” to get my point across. Think similar to the scones that use mascarpone cheese like Vanilla Dream scones or the Strawberry Vanilla scones that were my last strawberry creation.Yeah, they rival that level of creamy, mouth-meltingness.

The cream cheese doesn’t overwhelm the strawberries, but instead just adds a delightfully subtle tang and lots of cream. Did I mention they were creamy? Okay good.

But the best part about these scones (besides the giant chunks of strawberries) is the color…BRIGHT PINK!!! Five-year-old Jenna is dancing around in her twirly dresses with joy. These are the perfect scones for a little girl’s afternoon tea party, baby girl baby shower, or just a day that needs a little pink thrown in.

Strawberry Cream Cheese Scones

Strawberry Cream Cheese Scones

strawberry cream cheese scones

ingredients

  • 200 g plain flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 50 g ultrafine baking sugar
  • 1 cup chopped strawberries
  • 200 g strawberry cream cheese
  • up to 6 tbsp water as needed

directions

Preheat oven to 220°C (450°F). Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt into a mixing bowl. Add the sugar, strawberries, and cream cheese. Rub together the ingredients until evenly clumped. Add the water a little bit at a time and then knead into the dough until smooth. Do not overwork, but you don’t need to be as overly concerned with being delicate as you do with cream scones.
Place dough on a very floured surface and knead a few more times. Pat out to 1 cm thick. Cut 5 cm rounds from the dough with biscuit cutter and place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Reform and continue until there is no more dough.Bake for 8-10 minutes (8) until lightly browned and cooked through.
Strawberry Cream Cheese Scones

Strawberry Cream Cheese Scones

Ooooo, so many fun ideas: cut into flowers or hearts, top with more strawberries, top with a vanilla or lemon glaze….so those might not be traditional (and by traditional I mean British) scone things to do, but when strawberries are involved tradition can go out the window.

Recipe: Spiced Peach Scones

Well, my friends, today is the last peach recipe in my short series of peach scones. Are you sad too? I wish sometimes that all fruit was available ripe and perfect year round so that if I had a hankering for–let’s say–peaches in winter because my Spiced Peach scones would be the perfect holiday baked good, I could find peaches to make them as tasty in December as they would be in the height of peach season.

The agricultural world is so not fair.

Spiced Peach Scones

Spiced Peach Scones

Then again, if we had the full spectrum of fruit available year round, maybe we wouldn’t appreciate the excitement and delight of each fruit coming into season. Would I cherish each carton of fresh strawberries if they were always as delicious as they are in the blush of spring? Maybe not. Maybe seasonal produce is nature’s way of giving us something to look forward too (though it definitely stinks that all my favorite fruits are spring and early summer fruits).

This recipe was a challenge for me because I had nothing to base it on. Even some recipes that I create are based in part on recipes in books, like the peach basil ones of last week were adapted from a strawberry lavender scone I found somewhere else. But none of the recipes I have bookmarked or saved used compote as its primary source of liquid. I really was flying blind here.

Spiced Peach Scones

Spiced Peach Scones

I wanted to try cooking the fruit before incorporating it into the scone, so I decided to make a heated mixture of those fresh peaches we’ve been working with and some spices. The only problem is that I had no idea how to do it! I knew it wouldn’t be as simple as putting peaches in a saute pan and just letting them heat up. Yet I still had never made a compote before so was clueless as to how much sugar to add to the peaches, when to boil versus simmer, and how long it would take.

After some research and a little bit of math (real world application!) I attempted to make a spiced peach compote. It was so easy, I wondered why I haven’t been making fruit compotes my whole life. I feel like a whole new world of oatmeal toppings and desserts was just shown to me. Seriously, compotes are now a revelation for me: a thick, spiced syrup of gooey ripe peaches and melted sugar…are you drooling yet? You better be peeling those peaches at least!

Spiced Peach Scones

Spiced Peach Scones

Probably because the main liquid here is a thick syrup, these scones are very dense unlike the majority of scones I make. The first time I made these I also overworked the dough, and I think it was because I didn’t add enough other liquid to incorporate the ingredients without kneading too much. Lesson to all scone makers: it is more important to lightly handle the dough than using less flour on your workspace or having less cleanup. Add more liquid to the dough so you have to knead it less. You won’t regret it.

The peaches are wonderfully soft and sweet with the spices mulling about them. Your kitchen will smell incredible, making these not only one of the best tasting scones you’ll ever make, but also one of the best air fresheners you ever used. More incentive to make multiple batches!

Spiced Peach Scones

Spiced Peach Scones

Spiced Peach Scones

Ingredients for Compote

  • 10 ounces chopped peeled peaches
  • 1/4 cup white sugar
  • 1/4 tsp nutmeg
  • 1/4 tsp allspice
  • 1/2 tsp cinnamon
Ingredients for Scones

  • 200 g all-purpose flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 50 g ultrafine sugar
  • Compote
  • 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream

Making the Compote
Put peaches in a small saucepan. Add sugar, stirring to coat completely. Turn stove to medium heat.
As the sugar dissolves, the peaches will release a lot of liquid. Bring this liquid to a boil. Add nutmeg, allspice, and cinnamon. Stir well. Once mixture is boiling, leave over heat for 4 minutes to reduce liquid, stirring frequently.
Reduce heat and simmer for 2 minutes. Pour into a glass bowl and allow to cool to room temperature. Bask in its incredible smell. Resist urge to grab a spoon and dig into the compote. Do not pour over vanilla ice cream. Do not spoon over oatmeal. Do not do anything with it but let it cool.
Making the Scones
Preheat oven to 450°F. Line baking sheet with parchment paper. Set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Make sure everything is well mixed.
Add the COOLED compote (I didn’t let mine cool enough and my hands were definitely heating up when incorporating it to the dry ingredients). Once fully incorporated, add whipping cream one tablespoon at a time until dough has formed and is very moist. DO NOT OVERWORK THE DOUGH. The compote already adds a heavier element to the dough so it will be denser than most scones, but overworking it will result is very tough scones. And that would be no bueno.
Turn out onto a floured surface and pat down to desired thickness (1 cm). Cut out (5 cm) rounds and place on baking sheet. Bake for 8 minutes or until they are puffy and beginning to turn golden. Remove to a wire rack to cool slightly before serving.
Spiced Peach Scones

Spiced Peach Scones

Yes these are good with clotted cream :)

Recipe: Mulberry and Elderflower Scones

Sunday is our local Farmer’s Market. It is my favorite part of Sundays, strolling through the loop of fruits and vegetables, stopping by the McLarens stand to buy jam at, debating over the fresh baked breads, visiting a few of my regular fruit suppliers and discussing how their wares are today. Are the raspberries tart? How about the blackberries? Do they have Gaviota strawberries this week?

One of the coolest parts about interacting with the growers is discovering new produce and bouncing off ideas about how to use it in the kitchen (or in my case the oven!). Take a few weeks ago: Mom and I have a “Berry Lady”. The same woman sells us blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries every week. She knows that I am the only one who eats the reds and that we prefer the blues small if we are planning on cooking with them, large if we are not. She knows that none of us like tart fruit, so warn us ahead of time. Somehow she also knew that I would like mulberries.

I’ve heard of but never seen mulberries before, but there was a very small amount available so based on the Berry Lady’s recommendation, I bought a little basket. And she was right, I loved them. Mulberries are a more subtle, understated berry; their flavor is a blend of sweetness and earthiness. Mom described them as tasting organic, though I didn’t know that organic was a tasting note as well as a farming method 😉

The challenge came with figuring out what to do with a whole basket of mulberries. My flavor book had no mention of mulberries and I had obviously never cooked with them before, so I was pretty much at a loss. I knew that apart from eating raw, I wanted to make them into scones (face it, I want to make everything into scones), but making a simple cream scone and adding mulberries was too simple. I wanted interesting! I wanted unique! I wanted…a drink.

Kidding. Yet I did have a suspicion that elderflower might blend well with the “organic” taste of mulberries, and the only elderflower product I have ever seen in my town is St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur. Guess we really are liquoring up for these scones!

Trust me on these!

Trust me on these!

These were an incredible success. Sophisticated, elegant, and totally unique, mulberry-elderflower scones are the perfect use for a berry that you have never seen in real life. They spread more than they rise, but they are so moist and delicately flavored that breaking them in half and covering with cream would basically be a crime. Some scones are perfect plain, and these are one of those few.

So if you have a Berry Lady, and next time you see her she happens to have mulberries, take your tastebuds on an adventure and try these scones. Your horizons will be widened forever.

Mulberry and Elderflower Scones

Mulberry and Elderflower Scones

Mulberry and Elderflower Scones

Ingredients

  • 200 g all purpose flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 50 g ultrafine sugar
  • 1 cup chopped mulberries
  • 1/4 cup St. Germain liqueur
  • 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

Preheat oven to 450°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
In a mixing bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Add mulberries and toss.
In a small bowl, combine the liqueur and heavy whipping cream, mixing well. Slowly add liquid to the flour mixture, beginning to knead to form a dough. Be careful not to crush the mulberries. Dough will be very moist.
Turn out onto a heavily floured work surface and knead a few more times to incorporate a little more flour. Pat down to desired thickness (1 cm). Using a floured (5 cm) scone cutter, cut out scones and place them on the baking sheet. Knead remaining dough together again and repeat cutting out process.
Bake for 8 minutes until the tops are beginning to brown. Remove from oven to a wire rack to cool.
*Forgive the terrible and almost creepy pictures. The lighting was terrible and this was my fifth shoot of the day. My styling ideas were not on point by that time!*