Sticks Rocks & Dirt

This was my snack/late lunch today.

These sort of came about by accident. We needed milk for our coffee so I bundled up and walked over to Marczyk's. I picked up cream-top milk, heavy cream, house made mozzarella (I've not purchased rennet yet to make my own), and 2 oranges because Nate had mentioned both wanting some citrus and more fruit in his diet.

When I got home I decided that scones would be awesome to make.

WHY?!?! I never eat scones. I'm not partial to them in the least bit. In fact most of the ones I've had turn me off. Chalky and dry are not words you ever want to use to describe food.

I have this large jar of local organic flour. If you know me at all then you probably know how happy that makes me and how long I've been searching out locally grown and milled flour (and how inconceivably hard it is to find!).

I've also got this large jar of raw local honey. This stuff is delicious. I wanted to put the two together for some sort of super local baking extravaganza.

And for some reason scones popped into my head. So I went a-recipe-diggin. Which usually consists of me googling several of my favorite cooking blogs. Which is exactly how I stumbled across this recipe.

And of course she got the recipe from America's Test Kitchen.

So here's my recipe run down. I made a few changes from the recipe.

2c local organic unbleached flour
1T baking powder
3T local raw honey (I got mine from Lee's Bees)
3/4 t flaky sea salt (I pulled out the fancy stuff for this, fleur de sel de guerande)
5T chilled, unsalted butter (if you've only got salted, leave out the salt above)
zest from 2 oranges
1c heavy cream (mine was from Morningfresh dairy, it's so thick I swear it's already whipped cream)

First I turned the oven on to 425F.

Then I mixed all of the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.

First the flour.

Then the baking soda.

And the salt.

Then I zested the oranges.

But I decided that the orange zest shouldn't go in with the dry ingredients. Zest has a bad habit of drying out fast. So I measured out the 3 T of honey into my glass 2 c measuring cup and dumped all the zest into the honey as I was going. I think you'll get the most flavor out of your zest if you don't dry it out.

And I poured the slow as molasses heavy cream on top of the honey and then whisked it all up.

Now, it's time for one of my favorite parts. Toss in the 5T of cubed and chilled unsalted butter and grab your pastry cutter (or a knife and a fork) and cut the butter in. [side note: the pastry cutter was my all time favorite kitchen tool to play with when I was a kid. Especially if we were mixing butter and sugar or shortening and sugar. Then I would lick it clean. Gross, I know.]

Next, pour the heavy cream-honey-orange zest mixture into the dry stuff. Look at all of that yummy orange zest! Mix it up real good. Use your hands. Get all of the goodness mixed in.

Then, I dumped the dough onto my 1/4 sized sheet pan and smooshed it until it was square. I then cut it into 8 triangles.

Place the wedges on an ungreased baking sheet and bake at 425F for 12-15 minutes.

Your house will smell amazing, by the way. Try not to drool.

Also, don't do what I did. I set my timer. Then I started to smell the awesomeness and took a peek. My oven thermometer read 550F! WTF?!?! I snatched the scones out of the oven. Fortunately, I was putzing around in the kitchen and mixing up some no-knead bread dough and was there to pull them out.

But, in the end, disaster was averted. And, I got to eat this. Perfect scone, perfect cup of coffee. The scones turned out light and flaky. Not too sweet, and lightly orange flavored. Sitting in my comfy chair, drinking coffee, nibbling on a scone, and watching the snow fall out my window was the perfect way to spend my afternoon. And, these scones changed my mind about scones in general. They took me all of 20 minutes start to finish to make. Remind me why I'm not baking these several times a week so that I can eat them for breakfast every day?