Week Two: Blueberry Scones

(This recipe came from “The America’s Test Kitchen Family Baking Book,” which I highly recommend to bakers.)

You know how sometimes you start a project, and a fourth of the way through it, you find yourself thinking, “There’s no way this is going to work?”

That’s how these scones started out.

When I mixed the dry and wet ingredients, the dough was super sticky. The recipe instructed me to turn the dough out onto a ‘lightly floured’ counter and ‘lightly flour’ the dough enough that it wouldn’t stick.

I apparently have no concept of what ‘lightly flour’ looks like, because when I used a ‘light’ amount of flour, the dough stuck like crazy. So I floured it more. And more. And more. By the time I got these things in the oven, I discovered that ‘lightly flour’ actually means ‘use more flour to dust the counter than you actually put in the recipe’.

I finally got a ball of dough together that looked like this:

From there, I had to roll the dough out into a sqaure, then fold the square on itself, and then put it in the freezer for five minutes. This was the point where I thought it wasn’t going to happen. I couldn’t unstick the flour from the counter without tearing it apart. So I did the best I could and stuck the blob in the freezer.

After five minutes, I took it out and rolled it into another square, at which point I studded it with the blueberries:

(Side note: I’m not the biggest fan of raw blueberries. I tend to only eat them in muffins and pancakes. I didn’t realize they’re not blue on the inside! I was so disappointed.)

Once the blueberries were down, I rolled it up jelly-roll style (with some more sticking and more flouring). Once it got rolled up, I smooshed it down and started cutting:

Once they were cut into scone-like triangles, I put them on the baking sheet with My Precious, the Silpat:

A little baking and voila!:

Close up:

So I guess the lesson is to have faith in your abilities. If you’ve proven yourself good at something, take a chance and try something a little different in that field. It might start out a little rough, but if you rely on your past knowledge, it’ll usually turn out all right.

The only problem I had with these scones is that they created a TON of dishes:

Next week is the season premiere of “Lost” and Rob and I are having some friends over. I plan to bake some Cinnamon Swirl Bread that will be easy to grab blindly off a plate while our eyes are glued to the television screen.