Cream Scones

Had you offered me a scone at age seven, or even seventeen, I would have rolled my eyes at you. Perhaps my tastes were less developed than yours at such an age. Maybe you loved scones and snatched them up, greedily pinching every last crumb from the plate, carefully bringing them to the tip of your tongue and savoring the goodness that I was late to realize.

Scones didn’t merely disinterest me as a food, more extremely they instilled within me a certain skepticism that I now reserve for Lunchables and Sarah Palin—to me they were dry, rocklike, neither salty nor sweet, flavorless lumps of baked paste. And the very word itself did little for their cause—so plain, yet harsh sounding a word, one that invoked images of pointy chinned British headmistresses stiffly gathered around the table for afternoon tea, cackling and discussing punishments for naughty pupils.

Slowly but surely, I have come around. A few months ago while looting the cabinets of my mother’s kitchen I came across a crinkled white paper bag, within its depths sat two currant scones from Nashoba Brook Bakery in Concord, MA. The Goldie Locks in me reached a hand inside the bag and grabbed a small mound of scone, tasting it, trying it on for size. It was quite nice, buttery crumbles swirled around my mouth as I reached for another mound, and then another, until I had eaten in entirety, my first scone. But that was that. I enjoyed the scone, but quickly forgot about it. Or so I thought.

About two weeks ago, I did something that surprised me. Upon entering the café for Saturday breakfast I, without faltering, in fact, downright instinctually ordered a lemon scone to eat with my coffee. Since that scone from Sherman Café in Union Square, I have found myself completely and utterly consumed by the thought of them, and not merely the thought of eating them, but of baking them myself so that I might enjoy them for breakfast in the warmth of my own kitchen.

Since there are few foods I so fervently disliked as a child, that I should finally relinquish my distaste for the scone, and even grow to love the subtly sweet mounds of ‘baked paste’ seems oddly symbolic. It’s as though my newfound love for scones marks a second coming of age, a late puberty for my taste buds. In tow comes the realization that over the years my tastes have gravitated toward slightly more practical baked goods such as scones and zucchini breads over chocolate chip cookies and cakes with ganache icing.

Despite its buttery decadence, the scone is a most pragmatic baked good, and with its low sugar content it makes a reasonable vehicle for the sweet or savory, but is more interesting than say, a slice of buttered toast. The scone is somewhat of an enigma, with its firm, craggy exterior encasing the pillowy inner crumb. A scone is not supposed to be hard and rocklike, as I once thought, but rather tender and yielding on the inside, with ample cavities for catching clotted cream or lemon curd.

So, to usher me into my late twenties and you into fall, I introduce the cream scone adapted from the Joy of Baking Online (an excellent resource for aspiring gourmands, I have yet to find a recipe that doesn’t work flawlessly). This scone is round and biscuit like, traditionally served with a dollop of clotted cream or fragrant lemon curd. It might also be used in a strawberry shortcake recipe, though I simply eat these little guys plain, or with a pat of butter and a swirl damson plum jam as I did today.

Cream Scones

Ingredients 

2 cups of all purpose flour

1/4 cup granulated sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/3 cup cold, unsalted butter, cubed

1 tsp pure vanilla extract

1 large egg

1/2 cup light cream plus extra for glaze

Preparation

Set a baking rack in the middle of the oven, and preheat to 375 degrees. Lightly whisk flour, salt, sugar, and baking powder together in a large bowl. Add cubes of cold butter and use two knives to cut butter into small bits, creating a crumbly, loosely bound mixture. Set aside the mixture.

In a smaller bowl, lightly whisk together the egg, cream and vanilla. Pour wet ingredients into the flour-butter mixture and mix with a wooden spoon until incorporated, but lumpy. Prepare a lightly floured surface and kneed dough about twelve times. Kneeding the dough any more than this will activate the gluten, and create a dryer, more dense pastry. Gently roll the dough into a disc seven inches in diameter. Use a cookie cutter, or the top of a narrow glass jar to cut out circles from the dough. Set the scones one inch apart from one another on top of a cookie tray lined with parchment paper. Brush scones with cream and bake for about 15-18 minutes, or until puffy and slightly golden.