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Pumpkin White Chocolate Chip Scones

FINALLY! It’s FINALLY October so it’s FINALLY acceptable for me to post something pumpkin. Now, here in Southern California we are amazingly pumpkin spice anything obsessed despite it never really being cold enough to justify the warming, spicy taste of anything pumpkin spice flavored. Maybe it’s a case of wishful thinking, or hope that it’ll turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy (we act like it’s cold maybe it will become cold). But who can blame us when pumpkin is the best thing about this season?!

Pumpkin White Chocolate Scones

Pumpkin White Chocolate Scones

The other week I binge-baked pumpkin scones. I couldn’t help myself. I like variety and I love chocolate and I love love pumpkin, so it only made sense to make multiple batches of pumpkin scones.

White Chocolate Chip Scones

Basic doesn’t always mean plain or boring or bland or simple or unsophisticated or straightforward or adequate or unadorned or spartan or…okaaaayy I need to stop using the thesaurus because half of those synonyms aren’t even making sense anymore. I guess I just want to instill in you that an easy recipe of 6 ingredients with only a few minutes of real work can be amazing. Ā Because it can be. I only speak the truth šŸ˜‰

White Chocolate Chip Scones

White Chocolate Chip Scones

White Chocolate and Pistachio Dipped Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies

White Chocolate and Pistachio Dipped Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies

Wow. Four cookie recipes (I’m counting the peppermint bark since remember our gluten-free cookie sneakiness?) in a week. Come to think of it, have I ever posted four recipes that quickly? Must be all the sugar I’m consuming in testing these recipes that has me writing at the speed of the convection oven. Regardless, these cookies have been and will be all delicious so it’s totally worth the Costco sized block of butter you’ll go through making all of them.

White Chocolate and Pistachio Dipped Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies

White Chocolate and Pistachio Dipped Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies

Butter=Deliciousness. Mathematical proof right there.

Hidden Candy Cane Kiss Cookies

Shhhhhh! Don’t tell anyone what’s inside these cookies until they eat them! Let’s keep it a secret, a top secret, between us baking friends. It’s fun that way, isn’t it? It’s also super fun to watch the looks on people’s faces when they unsuspectingly bite into a simple looking cookie and find they’ve bitten into….a giant white chocolate-peppermint kiss! And not just any Hershey’s Kiss: A Kiss beautifully swirled with red and white stripes like the candy canes they are named for, softly melting into the buttery dough and bursting with white chocolate and peppermint flavors. It’s like we took candy canes, which are already awesome, and elevated them to even better, cookie covered heights.

Hidden Candy Cane Kiss Cookies

Hidden Candy Cane Kiss Cookies

The year I first made these cookies, I made 13 batches (not even exaggerating).

Peppermint Bark Bites

Peppermint Bark Bites

Welcome back! Did you enjoy your rest from sweets and rich foods once you finished all your Thanksgiving leftovers? (Thanks to a wonderful invention called the freezer, I still have some leftovers to consume, as well as even more Hidden Pumpkin Spice Kiss Cookies, Apple Cinnamon Cakelets, two loaves of Pumpkin Cinnamon Chip Cheesecake Bread, and scones that have yet to be published.) I thought I’d be nice and give you a week to recover before I dived face first into the season of holiday cookies!!!!! You’re welcome. And juuuuuust in case your oven wants a little bit longer of a nap–or it still smells like the self cleaning setting, blech–today’s recipe is NO BAKE!

Peppermint Bark Bites

Peppermint Bark Bites

My favorite holiday flavor just might be peppermint. I wait every year for the holiday displays to go up in grocery stores so I can pounce on the cartons of mini candy canes. Not entirely sure why I prefer mini candy canes to full sized ones….anyways, this means I obviously love peppermint bark!

Black and White Chocolate Chip Scones

Once upon a time (okay, a little over a year ago) I worked in a tea cafe. I had been a semi-regular customer there for years when I finally got the chance to be a server there, and I have to say it was one of my favorite restaurant jobs I ever had. And not just because at the end of our shifts, we got to take home one free scone. Yeah, I was spoiled.

black and white chocolate chip scones

black and white chocolate chip scones

What was interesting about the free scone situation was that when I was a customer before I worked there, all I ever ordered was the chocolate chip scone. I loved it! Then when I started my job, I suddenly switched and my favorite became the white chocolate chip scone. No idea what made me switch my allegiance. Now that I don’t waitress anymore and I make my own scones regularly, it felt like the right time to progress into a new favorite chocolate scone.

So stage three: The Black and White Chocolate Chip Scone.

Red, White, and Blue Scones

I feel super accomplished because I am getting you a holiday scone recipeĀ before the holiday so you can actually make them for your holiday get together!!! Yeah, I feel proud. Like, American pride!

Red, White, and Blue Scones

Red, White, and Blue Scones

White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Scones

White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Scones

First let me send out a huge thank you to all my new readers! The past two days, this blog has gotten overĀ 50 hits each day! Yay! And I’ve gotten some really nice messages and comments about my last review of Steampunk’s Afternoon Tea event. Hearing from you always makes me smile, so keep the communication going!

To celebrate, let’s make more scones. How else would we celebrate?

White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Scones

White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Scones

My mind has been on vacations a lot lately. No, not like I’m taking a mental vacation and becoming a space cadet, but like thinking about traveling and getting away from California for a little while. Maybe it’s because all the schools are getting out right about now and people are heading out of town. Alas, I’m a poor, starving actress who has to subsist on the millions of scones in her freezer and can’t afford to go on vacation just yet. So I guess I have to make a scone into a vacation! How about Hawaii?

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.Ā 

Recipe: Strawberry White Chocolate Coconut Scones

They say that inspiration comes from everywhere around us, and I’d agree. I am constantly walking along, minding my business, when out of the orange colored sky, FLASH! I see something that inspires a new scone flavor. It literally happens anywhere.

This combination has a magical inspiration behind it. Disneyland, in fact. During the strawberry harvest, Disneyland’s candy makers cover the most gigantic sweet strawberries in the world with the most incredible dark, milk, and white chocolate coatings. They were probably the most delicious fresh made treats those candy makers could have offered us. And my favorite coating–which I haven’t found in years–was the white chocolate and coconut covered strawberry.

Strawberry, White Chocolate, Coconut Scones

Strawberry, White Chocolate, Coconut Scones

These scones were my attempt to recapture that incredible flavor of a childhood treat, and I have bad news for you: say good bye to your waistline and apologize to your friends now because not only will you not share these, but you will eat the whole batch in an unprecedentedly short time span. I brought some in for a few of my coworkers to taste test, and already theirĀ parents are requesting them (though how the parents snagged a bite I’ll never know). Rest assured coworkers, I’ll be bringing these to the staff meeting this week.

You’d think that based on the combination of sweet flavors from white chocolate, sweetened coconut flakes, and strawberries (again from Harry’s Berries)Ā this scone would be cavity-inducing sweet, but since the base is my basic cream scone, there is a pleasant mildly salty element to counteract the sugar. Which makes them totally acceptable for mass consumption, right?

Strawberry, White Chocolate, Coconut Scones

Strawberry, White Chocolate, Coconut Scones

Strawberry White Chocolate Coconut Scones

Ingredients

  • 200 g self rising flour
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 50 g ultrafine baking sugar
  • 1 cup chopped fresh strawberries
  • 1/2 cup white chocolate chips
  • 1/2 cup sweetened flaked coconut, divided
  • 150 mL heavy whipping cream

Preheat oven to 220Ā°C or 450Ā°F. Ā Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Set aside.
Sift together flour and salt in a mixing bowl. Add sugar. Toss in strawberries, white chocolate, and 1/4 cup coconut until well distributed.
Work in whipping cream until all ingredients are fully combined. This is a very wet dough! Don’t worry you didn’t do anything wrong.
Turn out onto a heavily floured workspace and knead a few times. Pat down to desired thickness (1 cm). Dip scone cutter in more flour before cutting scones out (5 cm) and placing on baking sheet. THIS IS ESSENTIAL. Because the scone dough is so wet, you need a hefty additional amount of flour to make everything manageable when kneading and cutting. Knead offcuts back together and repeat process until most of the dough is used.
Brush tops of scones with water and sprinkle remaining coconut on tops.
Bake 8-10 minutes until starting to brown. These scones don’t rise, but they do spread out so make sure you have left some space in between the scones on the baking sheets.
Remove immediately to a wire rack to cool.
These scones not only don’t require a topping of cream or jam, but a topping would probably ruin them (way too many flavors in too small of a package) so forego any clotted cream, curds, or jams when serving these scones. Their deliciousness speaks for itself.
Strawberry, White Chocolate, Coconut Scones

Strawberry, White Chocolate, Coconut Scones

And make about 4 batches at a time, just to be safe šŸ˜‰