Grapefruit Scones

I have a confession: I love Cobs - love it.  And I live within walking distance of one, which is both a blessing and a curse!  They have great baking and great breads.  I love their cinnamon buns and I really love their scones.  I was walking by there the other day while running errands at the mall and of course I had to go and stare longingly at their products...but on a budget, I couldn't justify purchasing any scones, but I knew I had scone ingredients at home, so when I got home I got busy.

I have a great recipe for scones that has garnered me a lot of compliments over the years.  It's a lemon scone recipe that I've changed up to become orange scones, orange & blueberry scones, and probably some others.  Since I love baking with citrus, I decided to go with that theme again and make...grapefruit scones.  I did, after all, have a bunch of very nice, large ruby reds on hand.

Here is the scone recipe.  I have no idea where it originated, but I've had it for ages.

Lemon/Orange/Grapefruit/Citrus Scones

2 cups all purpose flour
1/3 cup white sugar
2 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2/3 cup cold butter, cubed
2 eggs
1/3 cup 10% cream
1 tbsp finely grated citrus zest
1/4 cup citrus juice

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.  Cut in butter and sablé with fingers until mixture is crumbly.

In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, cream, zest, and citrus juice.  Pour over dry ingredients and gently incorporate until you get a sticky dough.

Turn out onto a well-floured surface.  With floured hands, form into a ball and knead gently 8 times.  Place on parchment-lined baking sheet.  Pat into a circle 3/4" circle, then cut into 8 wedges.  Do not separate.

Glaze options: brush with citrus juice & sprinkle with sugar, or as I did, brush with an egg wash and sprinkle with citrus-flavoured sugar.

Bake at 350F until golden.

For the citrus sugar, I had 2 grapefruits zested.  I used half of the zest in the scones and shook the other half in a container with about 1/2 - 3/4 cups of sugar until well-combined (I credit my friend Jodi for giving me this idea).

These turned out great, though the scone itself could have used more grapefruit zest.  But they were a hit with my roommates!  The grapefruit sugar topping was awesome.  These scones are not the texture of Cobs' scones, which are more doughy.  I'm not sure which I prefer, but you can never beat homemade scones right out of the oven, that's for sure.

Scones for a Crowd

This is a recipe we make weekly at work, and they all go up to the hospital coffee shop. We alternate between blueberry one week and cranberry the next. This is a pretty good recipe, I have to say. It makes four big rounds that we cut into eight triangles.

Cream Scones

9 cups flour
4 tbsp baking powder
1 1/3 cups sugar
2 tsp salt
2 cups butter
8 eggs
3 cups cream or milk
egg wash & granulated sugar for topping
blueberries, cranberries - frozen - optional

Whisk together the dry ingredients and cut in the butter until it's small pea-size. In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs and cream. Make a well in the dry ingredients and add the wet until combined. Add fruit at this point. It's always better to use frozen fruit so the juices don't saturate the batter with tons of colour. It's an aesthetic thing. Don't overwork the dough, but make sure you get a nice consistent dough. It will be sticky. Turn it out onto a well-floured surface and cut into four even pieces. Pat each piece into a circle about 1" thick. Place on greased baking sheet and cut into desired number of triangles. Glaze with egg wash & sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 350F until golden brown and cooked through.

Enjoy!

Lemon Scones

Miss me?

I sure have! Man, have I been busy this past month, and with limited computer access to boot.

For some bizarre reason, I have become famous for these scones. Of all the things I could be famous for, it had to scones. Well, what's a girl to do? Take what fame she can and run with it, baby!

Next week we are hosting a weekend for social workers, case workers, challenged families and others regarding food availability issues for underpriviledged people, and the organizer mentioned to my supervisor that she knew someone at the recent music camps who was raving over these scones, which I had served for Sunday brunch once. I'm sure I'm going to have a request made to me for these scones at a planning meeting tomorrow. So here is what all the hubbub is about.

Lemon Scones

2 cups all purpose flour
1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2/3 cup cold butter
2 eggs
1/3 cup 10% cream
2 tsp finely grated lemon rind (approximately the zest of 2 - 3 lemons)
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

Glaze:
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp icing sugar

1. In a large bowl, whisk together the first 4 ingredients. Sable (see notes) in the butter with your hands quickly, until the mixture resembles something slightly chunkier than cornmeal.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, lemon rind, lemon juice, and cream. Drizzle over the dry ingredients and toss gently until the mixture clumps into a very soft sticky dough.
3. Turn out onto a very well-floured surface. With floured hands, form into a ball, kneading about 8 times. The dough will be very wet, so use lots of flour. Place on a parchment paper-lined sheet or lightly floured rimless baking sheet. Pat into a 1.5 cm thick circle and cut into 8 wedges. Do not separate.
4. Bake in 350F oven unitl golden.
5. For the glaze, combine the juice and sugar. Apply the glaze with a pastry brush just after the scones come out of the oven while they're still piping hot.

Notes.

- To sable means to rub the dry ingredients and the butter together with your hands. I don't bother with the pastry cutter or two knives crap because my hands are much more efficient, especially when I quadruple this recipe for a larger batch.
- Don't make these in a mixer for God's sake: you'll overwork the flour. The key here is mixing as little as possible and kneading as lightly as possible to get a delicate product in the end.
- Please, please, please use real lemons! That stuff that comes in the yellow lemon-shaped bottle from the store is awful! You cannot beat the real McCoy here, or anywhere for that matter. Get yourself a cheap citrus juicer and a zester and away you go.
- I make several variations of this. For instance, the lemon zest and juice is directly interchangable with orange zest and juice, and I do that a lot. Also, I often add blueberries, but while still frozen because they're easier to mix in and they'll keep their shape. Frozen raspberries would also work, or just skip the citurs altogether and add raisins and a bit of cinnamon.


Well, let me know how they turn out.

I hope to be updated this blog more often now that I have more time and more reliable internet access. I miss this a lot.