Scone Archives - Baking With Unicorns

Sigh.

I’m currently sitting at the side of a pool in Costa Rica. Today is the last full day at the resort I’ve been at. Then, it’s checking out and hoping our flights get us back to the states. It’s been a wonderful time here, with my friend Rose, though not without a few bumps along the way. Our first day here, we both got a bit too much sun. OUCH! The next day, we decided the BEST plan was to drive to a volcano and hot spring park where we could go zip lining. Google said it was 2 1/2 hours away. Lies. Turned out to be 3 1/2 hours. On top of the added hour of driving, we hit a pot hole on our way there and POP goes the tire. Course we didn’t know it was popped, so we kept driving on it for about 30-40 minutes on a dirt road till we got to our destination. OOOPS! Course we waited to change it until after zip lining. Seemed like a fine plan, except that it started to rain on us as we changed the tire. Grumph! BUT, at least we proved to ourselves that we could change a tire! YAY! Life Skills. After changing the tire, it was another 3 1/2 hours back to the resort, about 1 hour of which was in torrential rain. It’s always comforting to see the car in front of you nearly make a head on collision with the oncoming truck. But we survived!!!!

The following day (yesterday), Rose and I woke up early and excited to go to an animal sanctuary. We were told this would be an easy 30 minute drive away. I cannot confirm how far away the sanctuary actually was for us, as we never made it there. Definitely over 30 minutes away though. While on a dirt path to what we thought would lead to the sanctuary, the gas light started blinking. AH!!! Somehow the gas meter went from having 3 notches of gas to having 1 blinking notch! We decided to just keep on going as turning back meant going back along this dirt path we had been on for 20 minutes with no turnoffs. About 5 minutes after noting the gas problem, we came to a Botanical Garden and Waterfall Tour spot. We stopped to ask directions and use the bathroom and were told that 1) there’s no animal sanctuary on the road ahead, 2) there’s no gas station on the road ahead, and 3) the closest gas station was probably 5-10 minutes from where we initially turned onto the dirt road. What fun! Somehow we made it to the gas station without having to push the car there.

But in all honesty, it’s been a wonderful trip. I couldn’t ask for a better travel partner than Rose. We have had a great time, getting massages, drinking and relaxing by the pool, driving around, and enjoying NOT being at our respective jobs. To my excitement, we have seen some adorable iguanas, a gecko or two, and a frog. Sadly, I haven’t seen any red-eyed tree frogs, my favorite frog EVER, and native to Costa Rica. Admittedly, they are nocturnal, and we have been going to bed rather early, so that may be playing some sort of factor. Maybe.

Though it’s gonna be sad to leave, on the bright side, it’s gotten us jazzed up to do this again next year. I’m hoping to convince her that a 10 day biking tour of the Italian coast is the best idea ever…fingers crossed!

In baking news, the recipe below was made the day before we left for Costa Rica. I had planned on bringing them on the plane with me, however that failed epically. They were all gone that night, with nothing left to bring in my bag. Ooops! Guess that means they were tasty. The idea for these guys came from a drink I had at Harlem Public a few weeks ago. It had rosemary, lime, and cucumber in it, and i loved it! And I felt those flavors would be delicious in a scone, so I played a bit with a recipe I found many moons ago from one of my favorite cooking blogs, UseRealButter.com.

Rosemary-Lime Scones
Inspired by This

Ingredients:
2 cups flour+ extra for dusting
1/3 cup sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
5-7 sprigs of rosemary
2 limes
1 small cucumber
3 oz butter
6 oz heavy cream
2 egg yolks
1 cup confectioners sugar

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line baking sheet with parchment/silpat.

2. combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Remove the rosemary leaves from the stems and dice the leaves. Add to flour mixture. Then zest (is that a verb?) the two limes and add zest (it’s definitely a noun!) to flour mixture.

3. Place butter and flour mixture in food processor and pulse until mixture resembles small crumbs. The butter should be well incorporated at this point, with no huge butter chunks present. Place this mixture into medium bowl again. In a small bowl, combine egg yolks and cream, beating with fork until well combined. Add this to the flour mixture and mix with the fork. The dough will probably be pretty sticky, but should not be clinging to side of bowl.

4. Dust prepared baking sheet with flour. My exact measurement was 2 small hand fulls. Turn dough out onto floured surface and begin to knead dough with hands until all the dusted flour is combined into dough and dough is no longer sticky. Shape dough into a square (or a circle if you like) and then cut into 8 pieces, using the diagonals (if you chose to shape into a square). Space out scones on the baking sheet and then bake for 16-18 minutes.

5. Once scones are done baking, allow to cool thoroughly. While scones are cooling, juice the cucumber and the (now zestless) limes. I used a small juicer I have. If no juicer is readily available, then juice the limes by hand, then place the lime juice and cucumber (chopped into chunks) in food processor and blend until cucumber is completely pureed. Allow the juice to settle, so the the non juice parts float to the top, allowing you to scoop it off. Mix confectioners sugar with 2-3 tablespoons of the juice, combining until there are no more lumps of sugar. Add more juice until desired consistency is achieved. Finally, drizzle icing over the scones.

6. EAT IT ALL UP!!!!

I’m a bit slow at posting this one. Sorry! I swear the pumpkin was not sitting in my fridge for nearly a week before getting tossed into a recipe. It was only 24 hours. I’m just slow and lazy when it comes to snagging the pictures from my phone and uploading them…. BLARGH!

Anyway, here we are, closer and closer to the holiday season. Snow is FINALLY falling here in NYC. Columbia’s campus is covered in lights (I love it when they wind the lights around the branches) and I have NO pictures for you of these things. It’s cold out, and my hands say “NO” when I think about taking them out of their pockets to snap a nice pic. But I’m still hopeful, and you should be too. One of these days, my mind will overcome the will of my hands and SNAP! picture! Perhaps I can get my friend Tina to participate in this photo game. She and I have a margarita date on Tuesday, after my FINAL FINAL!!!! WOOOT!!!

Ugh, just 2 finals this semester. Unfortunately they are on the same day. But hopefully neither one will be too brutal. Hopefully. And hopefully I’ll actually study for them. Then again, maybe I’ll just bake and hope for the best with the finals… My TA’s like cookies, right? (Also, how many times can I hope to use a form of “hope” in a paragraph?)

This recipe went through several permutations before being made. At first I wanted to make a pumpkin pie with a curried corn crust (I saw a recipe for this somewhere) , but then I got lazy and couldn’t decided on how exactly to execute it to my liking. Next I was thinking that it would be nice to make this into a cheesecake kind of deal, again with the curried corn crust. And again, I’m just lazy! Then I was thinking “corn pumpkin scones” that sounds easy. And it probably would have been just as easy as this recipe turned out to be, however I decided I was forcing the corn and pumpkin together at this point and that I would simply make pumpkin scones with candid pecans outside. The idea came from a pumpkin pecan recipe that I made for Turkey day: Pumpkin Praline Pie!

Also, please note that as I type this up and as I was baking these scones, I was listening to this song, nonstop!

Sigh. What can I say. I love her.

Pumpkin Praline Scones!
Inspired by This and by This
Yields: ~12 scones

Ingredients:
For Scones:
3 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup packed light brown sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup, 6 ounces) unsalted butter, cold and cut into small cubes
1 cup half and half, cold
1 cup pumpkin puree (from scratch if you wish)
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

For Pecan Covering:
1 cup coarsely chopped pecans
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon dark Molasses

If you’re going to make the pumpkin puree from scratch, see instructions at end of this post.

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees and line a baking sheet with either a Silpat or parchment paper.

2. Place all dry ingredients and butter into food processor. Pulse for ~20 seconds until resembling a course meal. Transfer to a large mixing bowl and set aside. I found that after this, there were a few chunks of butter that resisted chopping. They got thrown back into food processor with a couple handfulls of the course mixture and pulsed some more until they yielded to becoming course meal themselves.

3. in a smaller bowl, combine 1 cup pumpkin puree, 1 cup half and half, and vanilla. Mix this up with a fork and set aside. Then, in food processor, chop up pecans until finely chopped. Place in a medium bowl and add remaining pecan covering ingredients. Toss with a fork until combined.

4. Combine the pumpkin ingredients with the dry ingredients and mix with a fork. You’ll notice that the mixture is very fluffy! Odd, I know and NOT at all what I expected for a scone, but who am I to judge? I suspect its the large amount of baking soda that reacts with the milk to get fluffy texture. Anyway, go with and go with it relatively quickly. Grab your prepared pan and prepare to get a bit messy. Spoon a large amount of batter (~1/4 cup) out and plot it into your bowl of pecan covering. Don’t be dainty here. Just use your hand and roll the lump of batter a round then plop is (unceremoniously) onto the prepared baking sheet and repeat!

5. Bake the scones for ~20 minutes and then remove from oven. Allow to cool on pan for ~10 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack. I recommend serving with a lit butter (Cuz there’s not enough in them already, but hey, that’s just me!)

For making your own Pumpkin Puree:

1. Find a suitable pumpkin. When I weighted my pumpkin, it was about 2 lbs. I probably got about 10 ounces of puree out of it, so make sure your pumpkin will be large enough for whatever you’re planning on doing with it.

2. Completely wash your pumpkin and then chop the sucker in half! Watch your fingers!

3. Removed the seeds and the stringy bits. Then rub with oil and, since I was making this into a sweet baked good, I threw on some cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves so that those flavors would bake in a bit.

4. Then roast the halves face down at 400 degrees for 45-50 minutes. You’ll know it’s done when it’s easily pierced with a toothpick. I generally don’t worry about overcooking here, just under-cooking as no one wants tough pumpkin baked goods. Gross.

5. Remove your pumpkin from the oven and let cool for at least a half hour. It helps if you flip them so they’re face up. Another way that you’ll know they’re done is if the skin is very very easy to peel off the “meat”. Remove all the skin and place in a food processor. Puree the heck out of it! Store in an airtight container until ready to bake with it. WOOT!

Rosemary, Limes, and Car Trouble

How a Pie Became a Scone…