Sunday Scones

Small confession: besides having an obsession with baking, I also have a slight obsession with magazines. It's almost impossible for me to take a trip to the store and not come out of there with a magazine of some sort. And each month I wait patiently by the mailbox to receive the two I avidly subscribe to. I flip through the pages, pick things I love, skip things I don't and put sticky notes on pages I MUST come back to. I usually tag about a million recipes, most of which I never actually pursue in the kitchen. But when I saw the recipe for these scones, I knew they would go on the top of the "make this" pile and actually have a pretty good chance of one day coming out of my oven. Go ahead and read on.

There were a few reasons I knew I had to make these. The fact that I had never made a scone in my lifetime was a reason, but not a very compelling one since I have tons of recipes of things I've never made. And I've still never made them. It was the fact that the recipe was incredibly quick and simple and the rarity that I actually had all the ingredients already. No trip to the grocery store required. That is a winning combination. Let's bake.

Blueberry-Buttermilk Scones
(as seen in Martha Stewart Living)

1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cake flour (not self-rising)
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 cup blueberries (I used frozen)
1/2 cup low-fat buttermilk
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Whisk together flours, granulated sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. This just breaks up any lumps that might be in the dry ingredients.



Cut in butter with a pastry cutter until mixture has the texture of coarse meal. You can also use your fingers to do this (which I actually did towards the end). You have to work fast to make sure the butter stays cold.





Stir in blueberries. I used frozen because I had them on hand, but the original recipe calls for fresh. Either way works.



Here's where I strayed from the recipe. I didn't have any buttermilk on hand, which is slightly embarrassing since its in the title of the recipe. Instead I ended up using a 1/2 cup of plain yogurt mixed with 2 tablespoons milk. It works, I promise. You get that same tart taste as you would with regular buttermilk and the same texture as well. Go ahead and whisk together buttermilk (or yogurt mixture in my case), 1 egg, and the vanilla. Drizzle over flour mixture, and stir lightly with a fork until dough comes together.

Turn out dough onto a work surface, and gently knead dough once or twice just to incorporate flour. Any recipe that has you knead only once or twice is a friend of mine. Don't over knead though, the texture of the scones depends on it.



Pat dough into a 1-inch-thick round.



Cut into 12 wedges and transfer to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. At this point you can brush the scones with little egg wash and sugar to get a nice golden-brown top. I ended up leaving this step out and was still pleased with the outcome. You'll bake these treats for about 22 minutes and transfer to a wire rack to cool.



For my first time making scones, I think these turned out pretty well. Because I used thawed frozen blueberries, they broke up more than fresh would have when mixed into the dough and created a slightly purple hue. But it didn't affect the taste of the scones at all, and the purple color made them more fun anyway.



These petite treats can be wrapped up individually and frozen for up to a month. Simply reheat in the oven, and you've got a quick breakfast! Enjoy!

~T