Thursday, May 21, 2009

sconeys!

Yesterday I made beautiful scones. None of the online recipes were satisfactory to my needs (desire to use up more oatmeal packets, being out of eggs, discovery of and subsequent obsession with frozen cranberries in the freezer, etc.), so I made up the recipe, and it was good! Mondo excitamundo!

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Cranberry-Pecan Scones

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup oat flour or whole wheat flour (I used a mix of two packets of ground up instant oatmeal and the rest whole wheat flour)

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 cup packed light brown sugar

3 T cold butter (I used my vanilla sugar butter, and subsequently cut back a little on the sugar, and didn’t add vanilla)

2/3 cup plus 1 tbsp. 1% milk, divided

1/2 cup frozen cranberries, roughly chopped into halves-ish

1/4 cup chopped pecans (chop then measure)

a little lemon zest

Preheat oven to 425.

Sift together dry ingredients (flour through salt) in a bowl, mix in sugar. Crumble in the butter.

Make a well and stir in the milk, then stir in cranberries, pecans, and lemon zest. Dough will be sticky!

Pat out into a circle on a lightly floured surface- the circle should be 8 inches or so in diameter:

scone dough

Cut into wedges like a pizza- 8 total. Place on greased baking sheet and brush with remaining tablespoon of milk. Bake for 16 minutes or so, or until browned to your liking.

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There are mine, hot outta the oven! This is incidentally a very healthful recipe—half whole wheat, low on sugar, with fresh fruit and a tasty but not overwhelming dose of healthy fat with the pecans. If you make 8, each is about 218 calories.

The taste is also SUPERB!

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The oats do something really nice for the texture- and they have such a nice flavor! There isn’t a ton of sugar in them, but they are definitely sweet, so sweet that I have just eaten mine straight up, although would be quite delicious with traditional scone toppings like butter and jam.

These scones are also very filling, thick and hearty- reminiscent of a coffeehouse scone, except ACTUALLY HEALTHY! And it’s so much fun not knowing when you’re going to get a tasty chunk of pecan or a zesty bite of cranberry.

I enjoyed my first scone with afternoon tea on the deck:

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And my second scone with breakfast this morning. That is probably the last scone I will get- there were eight, and there are only three people in the house, but my little sister has already eaten 4, within 18 hours of them coming out of the oven…

I love cooking and having other people enjoy my food, but it’s really annoying living in a house with a bottomless pit. I’d like the occasional batch of cooking to last longer than a day, and have the entire family get to enjoy a few pieces.

ANYWAY. Sorry. I needed to whine.

Last night I wasn’t going to bother posting dinner, cause I make lentils and spinach all the time, but I had the EXCITING topping of Trader Joe’s Greek yogurt.

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MMMMMMMMMMMMMM. My mom got the whole milk kind and it is MIGHTY rich and would really totally overwhelm me if I ate it straight up but as a topping it was so good I have a hard time even describing it.

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