Fun female junior here. I’m doing a guest post for Missus Fun because today was a leftover and eating out day and that’s never quite as interesting as cooking your own meals! I am heading back to college soon, which means leaving a large, well-stocked kitchen and returning to cafeteria food and an on-the-go lifestyle which doesn’t allow me a lot of time to experiment in the kitchen. So I thought I would go out with a gastronomical bang, so to speak, and have been spending quite a bit of time in the kitchen for the past week.
I’m really more of a baker than a cook, though I’m learning to expand my main course offerings (following Missus Fun’s example, of course ;) My most favorite thing to bake and eat is The Scone. Scones are dense and rich, somewhere between a biscuit and a muffin. It’s common to find one or two variations at most coffee shops, even mainstream ones like Starbucks, but the “scones” you find here in America vary in quality. I’d even characterize them as rocks sometimes.
In any case, what I made today are lovely, moist specimens. I used a recipe posted by one of my favorite food bloggers, Deb at smittenkitchen.com. I made a couple of minor modifications. I used light cream instead of heavy cream. I also did everything by hand since we don’t own a stand mixer or pastry blender (ahem, Mrs. Fun.) And then, I got lazy at the end and just plopped down roundish lumps of dough instead of rolling it out and using a cutter. It does look a little better and more authentic when you take that extra step, but hey, it tastes the same! (When I do roll it out, I use a drinking glass for my cutter.)
After the original cranberry cream batch, I decided to make another batch. As a scone lover, I’ve tried my fair share of scone flavours - pumpkin, pear ginger, apple cinnamon, chocolate chip, oatmeal, blueberry lemon - but I wanted to try something a little out of the ordinary. So I adapted the above recipe to create a Green Tea Chocolate Chip version. I substituted semisweet chocolate chips for the cranberries. For the green tea flavour, I mixed two teaspoons of green tea powder in ¼ cup hot water and then added ¾ cup light cream so that the total liquid content stayed the same.
A note about green tea powder: usually when you’re cooking with it, you want to spring for the Matcha tea powder, which is finer and more flavourful. I used a lower grade green tea powder because that’s what we had in the house (it’s all about being adaptable!) and it tastes alright for scones. When I’m making green tea ice cream though, I always try to use Matcha.
Scones are easy to make and require very few ingredients. They’re great for breakfast, tea-time, or through the day snacking! I would of course suggest that you go all-out British and have a cuppa while you’re at it. Black tea with a little milk and sugar is best!
Come back tomorrow for our regularly scheduled programming!
Oh, and if you want to follow my food adventures as I head back to school, follow me on Instagram (@serenetea24)!
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