Cinnamon, ginger, and salt. The Spices reunite.

Okay, only as I was submitting and rejecting titles for this post did I realize that I had unwittingly made a scone incorporating all three Spices.  Oh yes.  I have stumbled on a tribute scone to the band that rocked Sayles Boulevard from 1985 – 1988.  The Spices are so imbedded in my subconcious that I planned and executed a breakfast scone in their very image without even realizing I was doing so.  Awesome. 

If you are unfamiliar with The Spices, or are confusing them with the slightly more popular pop group The Spice Girls, here are some pictures for your clarification:

The Spices mid-jam in Abilene, Texas, circa 1988.

 

The Spice Girls showing off their fancy costumes and high-budget backdrop, circa 1998.

So you see, whereas The Spice Girls look old and tarted up in Cool Britannia, The Spices presents a wholesome, fresh, unmaterialistic face to the tweens who idolize them.

Some background: The Spices was comprised of Ashley a/k/a “Ginger,” Peden a/k/a “Cinnamon,” and the youngest of the bunch Lindsey a/k/a “Salt.”  Salt was lucky if she got to fetch us Cokes while we were rehearsing our #1 hit “Tee Tee on the Rocks” or if she got to bang on the bongos in the background of our video for ”Nobody Lives Forever.”  But, like actual salt, Salt enhanced the flavor of The Spices, especially when she contributed her heart-wrenching, roof-raising solo in “The Alamo”:

“Santa Ana was a bimbo / You-know-what-I-mean-you-know-what-I-mean-you-know-what-I-mean.”

Unfortunately, The Spices’ flame, though it once burned so brightly it overshone the myriad stars in a West Texas night sky, eventually petered out.  There is confusion about the group’s disbandment, but I think it had something to do with Ginger starting 6th grade and becoming too cool to play in a pretend band.

Anyways.  In memory of many good times, I present The Spices scone: a scintillating olio of black tea, cinnamon, candied ginger, and – of course – salt.

Experiment #3A: The Spices Scone.

First things first: how to incorporate these flavors?  For the black tea flavor, I steeped 6 bags of Trader Joe’s Irish Breakfast Tea in a cup of whole milk.  As with the lavender, I brought the milk almost to a boil, covered it, steeped it, and finally removed it from the stove, part and parcel, to the icebox.  I also threw in two cloves for extra flavor.  There isn’t a lot to say about this part: of course steeping tea bags in a liquid worked.  That’s what those little bags do.

As for the cinnamon flavor, I simply added a tablespoon of ground cinnamon to the dry ingredients.  This may have been too much.  While I steeped a heck of a lot of black tea, the dominant flavor in this scone was the cinnamon.  Perhaps next time I will trim it down to half a tablespoon.  Also, I wish there were a more homey and creative way to incorporate cinnamon.  Perhaps I could zest a cinnamon stick?  Would that be tasty?  More authentic? 

The candied ginger flavor was accomplished by rolling candied ginger into the dough.  Next time I will probably incorporate it in the dry ingredients, a la the dark chocolate in Experiment #2C.  Because I cut this batch into sixteen pieces, instead of eight, it’s important to incorporate the filling into the dough at the dry ingredients stage, rather than rolling it in post-wet ingredients.  If I roll the filling into the dough and try to divvy the batch up into sixteen small pieces, some pieces are full of filling while others are just plain dough.  So I think, whenever possible, I should try to incorporate fillings with the dry ingredients.

And finally, the salt acted as the flavor enhancer it is, bringing out the muskiness of the cloves, the spiciness of the cinnamon, and the tanginess of the ginger.  Ah, salt!  (I just used the regular amount of salt called for in the original recipe).

The result was a mild, tasty scone that offered a nice respite after the explosion of dark chocolatey-ness in Experiment #2:

 

I think it is best used as a breakfast scone.  I had one this morning.  It was delightful and reminiscent of cinnamon toast (but with a gingery bite!).  There is room for improvement (less cinnamon, more tea, maybe more ginger), but the unbalanced flavors were not egregious.  I think this is ideal for one of my Christmas gifts, paired with the honey butter recommended by Maman.  Hurrah!

A technical change I made: I buttered the rolling pin before flouring it.  This was the best idea EVER.  This “idea” of mine might be common sense to some of you, but it only came to me after several battles with sticky dough that tore apart as soon as I tapped it with my pin.  So I am ecstatic about this discovery.

Also, I’m having trouble getting my scones to stay upright in the oven.  Some of them always like to flop over and bake on their sides.  Any suggestions?

I’m ready to go back to savory scones.

 

Quit it with the lavender, already.

It was a white Thanksgiving in Abilene, Texas! 

 

Oh my.  It has been way too long.  I guess, with all the pre-Thanksgiving hubbub, blogging felt like a chore.  But I definitely baked some scones: two more batches of the dark chocolate and lavender ones.  I feel pretty satisfied with the final batch, although people still say they can’t really taste the lavender.  I blame that on their own poor palates.  Or maybe I am so overloaded with lavender that that is the only thing I can taste in those scones.  Between lavender-scented air freshener, dish soap, hand soap, face oil (from the Farmers’ Market, remember?), and scones, I’m tasting lavender in everything.  I might need an itty bitty lavender break.

(Although, I do think a plain lavender scone, sans chocolate, would be veddy nice.  Will work on that in a few weeks, perhaps.)

So, one of the reasons I began my Great Scone Experiment was to practice for scone-a-licious Christmas gifts.  I know, I know.  People eat enough during the holidays - I don’t need to add to their waistlines with buttery scones.  But I think they’re nice and festive and somewhat interesting.  Maman suggested I give them as gifts with a ramekin of homemade honey butter.  Doesn’t that sound lovely?  She’s full of good ideas.

It turns out, scones also work nicely as Thanksgiving gifts and “Thank-you-for-having-me-in-your-home” gifts and “Thank-you-for-meeting-me-at-the-airport” gifts and “Thank-you-for-procuring-me-a-boffo-parking-space-in-the-garage-that-has-wider-parking-spaces” gifts.  It was nice having several batches of my dark chocolate and lavender scones to hand out to awesome people.  It made me feel like the Queen bestowing OBEs on the worthy.  As if I got to say, “YOU are super, and YOU are super.  Please, take this small scone in recognition of your super-ness.”

People appeared to be pleased.  Even if they couldn’t taste the lavender, most people didn’t object to chocolate in their pastry.  Moral: bake scones!  People will like you for it!

Another bonus: the more scones you give away, the less you eat.  I have yet to conquer the urge to eat one right out of the oven: rolling it over in my mouth, burning my tongue, and trying to savour it like a fine wine.  But I have at least managed to give the others away before I’m tempted again.  That I need to keep an eye on my own waistline was brought home to me by a conversation I had at the Farmers’ Market with some people selling chlorophyll juice (not kidding).  The juice was sweetened with agave and was actually very tasty.  The guy behind the counter suggested I try the chlorophyll juice sweetened with honey.

• Him:  You don’t look like one of those vegans who won’t eat honey.
• Me:  Um, what is that supposed to mean?
• Woman, also behind the counter:  Honey, you look great.  You’re what they used to call thin. 
• Me:  (eyes widen in disbelief)
• Woman:  I mean, Nicole Ricchie and all those skinny girls… (trails off)

End Scene

USED to call thin?!  Anyways.  One scone per batch for me.

Experiments #2B & 2C:  Dark Chocolate & Lavender and Dark Chocolate & Lavender.

 

The biggest change I made in both of these recipes was to cut the proportion of chocolate in half.  Originally, I used almost two bars of dark chocolate.  In batch 2B I used only one bar, and in 2C I used about three quarters of a bar.  This amount was plenty of chocolate.  It is ooey-gooey and delicious, but there is definitely such a thing as too much of a good thing.  And, I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, too much chocolate overpowers the lavender.

Another change I made was throwing in the chocolate with the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and baking soda), instead of waiting to roll it into the dough at the last minute.  This technique worked better for me because it prevented the baking scones from bursting open, exposing their chocolatey bellies, and basically burning all the chocolate.  If the chocolate is already a part of the dough, it is more wholly incorporated and helps the scone keep its shape when it bakes.  Definitely a technique worth trying on other scones.

I also upped my lavender proportions.  For batch 2B I steeped another round of lavender in the leftover lavender-infused milk from 2A.  Ergo, the milk was doubly infused.  This worked well, but it sounded time-consuming to steep lavender twice for batch 2C, especially because the milk needs to chill in the icebox for a while before using it to make the scones.  So instead of a double steeping, I steeped a LOT of lavender in the milk: I almost brought the milk to a boil as I added lavender sprigs, then I turned off the heat and covered the pot to let the lavender steep, and after it was room temperature-ish I put the whole thing as-is into the icebox.  I waited until I was about to whisk the milk up with the sour cream before straining the lavender out.  This worked very well and was not at all labor-intensive.

Finally, presentation-wise, I cut the scones into smaller pieces and dusted them with sanding sugar.  I baked the scones at their regular size (one batch = eight pieces), then cut each scone in half once they had cooled off a bit from the oven.  So I had sixteen scones to spread around in my benevolence.  As for the sugar, I tried to dust with sugar pre-oven for batch 2A, and then I tried to bathe in melted butter & dust with sugar post-oven for batch 2B, but neither of these techniques looked great.  Actually, they looked as if I had done nothing to the scone tops.  But for batch 2C, I just dusted with sugar -no melted butter bath – post-oven, and that leant a glimmery sheen to the scone tops.  Sweet!  Literally!

Note: these scones aren’t very good at room temperature or less.  They definitely need to be warmed up in the oven.  And they keep very well for at least five days in a Ziploc baggie.  I know, I tried. 

Here are pictures of some beautiful dark chocolate & lavender scones.  Don’t tell me that YOU could resist a fresh-baked one right from the oven…

Batch 2B: regular-sized scones.

 Batch 2C: 16 dainty scones.

 

Lots of chocolate for me to eat.

Mmm… Back to the Farmer’s Market yesterday to troll for scone supplies.  On my list: lavender and honey dates. 

I stopped off at the lavender stand first, where this guy sells bunches of dried English and French lavender, along with essential oils and things.  I don’t know very much about lavender, except that I like the way it smells, so I asked for a bunch of the most pungent kind.  He handed me the English variety.  He also somehow convinced me to purchase a glass jar of jojoba oil mixed with lavender essence that will “change my skin forever.”  *Sigh*  I’m such a sucker for any jar promising me youth and beauty (especially if that jar is full of organic things and is priced below $20).  This guy’s little wife spent the first half of our conversation hiding behind him and peering at us around his shoulder.  The second half she spent spraying us in the face with some-kind-of-scented jojoba oil. 

The date stand was uneventful, but the dates themselves were as delicious as I remembered.  I had to hold the lavender upright all through church and lunch, because I didn’t want to crush its fragrant flowers.  Not that I’m complaining: it smelled gorgeous.  When a homeless man asked us for a dollar, I offered him a date. 

• “Would you like a date?” I asked, as my friend dug in his wallet. 
• The homeless man chuckled.  “Why, yes, I would like a date…”  Grin, grin.  Leer, leer. 
• I blushed bright red, handed him the fruit, and ran away. 

When I got home I embarked on my first sweet scone.

Experiment #2A: Dark Chocolate & Lavender

Don’t you love the word “lavender”?  Anyways.

First of all, my culino-omniscient Maman solved the frozen butter conundrum.  It’s very simple: use a cuisinart.  Now, I had to weigh the ease of the cuisinart against the hominess I love of creating scones with only my hands and a few basic tools (none of which have to be plugged in).  Also, there’s a clean up factor involved with using a cuisinart, and I don’t have a dishwasher.  But I was won over by the cuisinart when Maman pointed out that I could chop up enough frozen butter for several scone batches at once, and keep them in the freezer until I needed them.  I’m sorry hominess, but I really HATED grating the frozen butter.

Here is an example of my frozen butter, post-cuisinart:

It kind of looks like popcorn.

After cuisinart-ing enough frozen butter for four batches of scones, I set to work on my lavender/milk infusion.  Thinking that lavender buds and stems would be distracting (and disgusting) in my chocolate/lavender scone, I thought I might be able to achieve an essence of lavender by steeping it in the recipe’s milk.  Then, hopefully, the batter itself would smell like lavender.

I put one cup of milk on the stove over a low flame (a batch of scones only requires a half-cup, but I figured I would probably have to make this batch again to get it right).  Once the milk got warm, I added about a quarter-cup of dried lavender buds and stems.  I originally thought I would tie this up in cheesecloth and steep it like tea, but I couldn’t find cheesecloth at the grocery store.  So I just threw the lavender into the milk directly.  I stirred the milk and lavender concoction for several minutes, never letting the milk boil.  Then I turned off the heat, covered the saucepan, and let the milk and lavender cool down.  When cooled, I strained the milk into a bowl, to be set aside in the icebox.

Okay, I tasted this infusion before chilling it in the icebox.  It was… um… earthy.  It tasted like twigs and sour milk.  I was not heartened. 

Once everything was properly cooled, I began my first foray into sweet sconedom. 

Big difference: sweet scones contain, shockingly, sugar!  This makes the batter stickier.  Sticky is good for getting the batter to lump together, but bad for rolling pins and cleaning up generally.  I tasted some of the batter stuck to the rolling pin, and holy mamma mia, that sugar did the trick.  That twiggy lavender taste was transformed into the sweet smell of a lingerie sachet.  The batter was delicious.

Unfortunately, I added too much dark chocolate.  Dark chocolate has such a strong taste, and the lavender’s taste was so light and delicate, that the chocolate overwhelmed the scone.  Unless you paid close attention when eating pieces of chocolate-free batter bits, the lavender was missed entirely.

Not that a plain chocolate scone is bad.  I mean, really. 

I am making a new batch tonight or tomorrow.  This time I am steeping more lavender in the remaining pre-infused milk, and I am halving the amount of dark chocolate. 

On a different note, I used the lavender/jojoba oil stuff on my face last night and this morning.  I do think my skin looks good.  Odds are I’ll  be sick to death of lavender by the end of this week.

 

Figs revisited.

Okay.  I woke up at 6am yesterday morning to work out at my gym with all the early-rising over-achieving fitness gurus.  The crowd at 6am is seriously more attractive and more fit than that at 7.  Maybe 6am is for the true gym dedicatees?  I don’t know.

 I dragged myself gymwards that early because:

1. I had to drive to the dealership for an estimate before work.  My brand new car, Hedwig, was assaulted by a Mercedes last weekend and lost her driver’s side mirror.  (The Merc is paying, so no worries).
2. I have had to go to various collision centers and meetings (strrrrrrrike!) in the wee small hours every morning this week, so the gym has dropped significantly on my priority list.
3. I planned to revisit my manchego/fig/pecan scones last night!

Experiment #1B: Manchego / Fig / Pecan again.

 

 Besides resulting in spilt flour all over our laundry room floor, this experiment turned out well, if I do say so myself. 

The recipe I’ve been tweaking is for sweet blueberry scones.  Last time I made these manchego/fig scones, my only deviation from the recipe was not adding sugar.  This time, I left out sugar, doubled the salt, and added ground black pepper to make the batter more savory.  It worked.   Whereas the previous result was a little bland (though moist and airy), this result had a little more oomph that set off the cheese, fig, nut combo.

Another difference between Monday night’s figgy scones and the ones last night was I upped my fig : cheese & nut ratio.  Before, when I rolled out the batter in preparation for filling, I spaced out some fig slices evenly over the dough.  This time, however, I covered the dough in a dense layer of fig, then a layer of cheese, and then a layer of nuts.  While this method did not help my over-stuffing problem (see last post), it left me with a very tasty scone.  The flavors in this scone were much better balanced, I think as a result of both the tweaked batter and the upped fig proportions.

Did I tell you how this recipe calls for grated, frozen butter?  Odd-sounding, but it does.  So that’s another difference: Last time, I had just bought my butter before throwing it in the freezer for an hour; this time, it had been sitting in the freezer for several days.  I’m not sure what difference this made to the fully-cooked scone, but it made a big difference to my numbing hands as I painstaking grated the frozen butter.  This is by far my least favorite part of preparing scones.

A positive difference was that this time I got to use my new rolling pin.  It was lovely and helped me to roll out my dough more thinly, thus better enabling the stuffed logroll part of the recipe.  The rolling pin was an all around better tool than what I had been using before.  While a wine bottle actually makes a very good rolling pin, rolling it in dough makes for a very messy wine bottle.

Finally, I divvied up this batch of scones into eight pieces, as the recipe tells me to do, rather than sixteen.  Okay, okay.  The recipe writers knew what they were talking about.  While some of the scones did slide and ooze a bit (probably because they were stuffed to the gills with savory deliciousness), they generally maintained their shape. 

So here they are in all their glory:

They really were tasty.  And I’ve managed to limit myself to just one.  I brought them to work in hopes of bribing my colleagues to do my work so I can blog all morning.  Success!

Oh, and here is Hedwig’s poor side mirror:

 

Butter and sour cream.

Moist-a-licious scone recipe has been found.  And what makes it so moist?  A half-cup of sour cream and one ton of butter.  Naturally. 

I am a woman obsessed with scones.  Yesterday, they were all I could think about.  I came up with a list of tasty possible flavors:

• blue cheese / dried cherry / walnut
• candied pineapple / ginger
• sharp cheddar / bacon
• gorgonzola / honey date / (should I add citrus?)
• parmesan / sausage / rosemary
• manchego / fig / pecan
• dark chocolate / lavender
• monterrey jack / green chili / red pepper flakes (this idea is courtesy of my mom)
• mushroom olio / truffle oil
• feta / olive / rosemary
• black tea / ginger / cinnamon
• mozzarella / tomato / basil

The beauty of the scone is that you can either go down the sweet route or the savory route.  There are innumerable possibilities.  Dreaming up the possibilities is fun and makes me feel creative.

My mom is a brilliant cook and knows everything culinary.  Or, if she doesn’t know everything, she at least knows where to find it.  Within minutes of hearing my dry scone woes, she produced an e-recipe that claimed to remedy this arid dilemma once and for all.  The solution?  Chilled dough and a lot of extra fat. 

Ach!   This adds a whole new element of danger to my experiment.  Not freezer burn, but weight gain.  I’m single and approaching 30.  The world mandates that I absolutely, under no circumstances, gain even one pound.  Honestly, I have 20 to lose.

But I am still compelled to experiment with scones, fattening or not.  The things one will put up with for one’s art (head hanging, heavy sigh).

Experiment #1A:  Manchego / Fig / Pecan

I wanted a figgy scone because I had a basket of figs from Sunday’s farmer’s market sojourn.  Maman (this is my mother) suggested manchego cheese and toasted pecans to go with.  Armed with her advice and the cold, fatty scone recipe, I attempted this savory scone.

The deal with this new recipe is that all the ingredients must be very cold.  That way, through the magic of baking chemistry, the resulting scone will puff up to be airy and light.  The butter must be frozen, and even the flour should be chilled.  So I prepped everything and stowed it in the icebox while I wandered off to read or something.

The next thing about this recipe – or any scone recipe – is that the baker can hardly touch the dough with anything.  Seriously.  Scone recipes warn that if you handle the dough too much your scones will come out flat.  (Sidenote: this concept also applies to my hair.)  You really should just slap at it a few times before pronouncing it fit to be baked. 

Another thing, this recipe was a recipe for blueberry scones.  Just sweet little blueberries.  I was planning to make a tri-ingredient savory scone, so I would have to wing the manchego : fig : pecan proportions.

And finally, while this recipe yields approximately the same amount of dough as my first recipe yielded, the baker is only supposed to divvy it up into eight scones.  Well, I was able to divvy up the first recipe into sixteen.  I thought I could do the same with this recipe.  Clearly the next sentence is going to be: I was wrong.

Verdict:

The new batter is delicious and biscuit-like.  But the scones weren’t pretty to look at because of two things: 1) I overstuffed them with my three ingredients, and 2) I cut them up too small.  This made some of the scones fall over, break open, and expose their stuffed underbellies to the harsh glare of that thing in the oven that makes it hot.  However, the scones that stayed put were very tasty.  The flavors worked well together (thank you, Maman!).  The scones could have used more figs, which held up amazingly well.

Next time:

I will use more figs.  I will roll out the dough so that it’s a little thinner.  I will only cut it into eight pieces.

C’est tout.

 

Diary of a scone.

So.  Scones are the new thing.  At least in my world.  I made a batch of (very dry) gorgonzola and green onion scones this weekend for a girly party in the hills.  I read about them in a special edition magazine aptly entitled “Appetizers.”  They looked delicious, and I hadn’t baked in a long while, so I located my parchment paper and set out to bake some scones.

 Baking is wonderful.  If you haven’t tried it, you should.  For me, it’s the feminine equivalent of construction work.  I get to use tools, I get to use my hands, I get to build something out of nothing.  It’s all very satisfying.

The scone itself is also wonderful.  There’s something so rustic about a scone.  It’s crumbly and imperfect.  You don’t need fancy kitchen equipment to make one – just your hands and a rolling pin.  My original scone recipe suggested using egg white to glue a sprig of rosemary to the top of each scone.  They looked like they were baked by some Provencal maman in her wood-burning oven. 

I spent about twenty dollars on groceries, and ended up with thirty-two scones (and plenty ingredients leftover).  The ingredients were simple: flour, eggs, buttermilk, salt, pepper, baking soda, and baking powder.  And, of course, green onions and gorgonzola cheese.  Like I said, they came out dry.  But they were tasty. 

This is what they looked like.  I took this picture with my phone, btw.

The next day I strolled through the Hollywood Farmer’s Market to kill time.  Oh, a farmer’s market!  Where food begins!  Or almost.  Stalls were teeming with California produce.  I hardly bought a thing because I couldn’t process all the exotic fruits, cheeses, herbs, and vegetables for sale.  I did stop at a stall selling dates.  The dates tasted like candy: wildly delicious.  I purchased a basket of dates, a basket of figs, two soy candles, and a tamale.  When I left the market, my head buzzed with the question, What should I make?  What should I make?  I wanted to come back next weekend with an agenda and really explore those market stalls.

Later, eating dates (and convinced that the general public does not eat nearly enough dates), I thought it would be nice to bake a scone with honey dates and gorgonzola.  This got me thinking about other flavor combinations.  Nothing too crazy, just a sconic incorporation of things I like to eat.

So hmmm… If I can get hold of a moist-a-licious scone batter (begone dry scones!), then I will begin my Great Scone Experiment.