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.