Food Time: Maple Blueberry Scones

Stars. Yes. I see stars. No I did not bump my head against the cabinet again (true story. twice!) The other day at work, a co-worker offered me a scone that she got from Target, and I told her, "Oh, I used to love making scones!" Then an epiphany happened today and I was inspired to make, er, scones. Yet I want to have fun with it so I decided to get my star cookie cutter and made star scones. It came out pretty funny... with some of the star legs crooked. Who cares. It tasted good. 

I browsed around and found this recipe from The Shoe Box Kitchen, who she adapted from Smitten Kitchen (one of my favs!).

Maple Blueberry Scones

makes about 2 dozen small size scones (ok, 2 dozen star shaped scones in my case)

adapted from The Shoe Box Kitchen who got it from Smitten Kitchen

Things you need: 

• 2 cups of All-Purpose Flour (I used the Gold Medal brand)
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp granulated sugar
• 5 tbsp butter, chilled
• 4 tbsp maple syrup
• 1 cup of heavy cream, chilled
• 1/2 cup "blueberry juice infused" Craisins (you can substitute this with any dried fruit you want. Or maybe fresh fruit)

First, preheat the oven at 425F. 

Using a food processor, sift the flour, baking powder, sugar, salt into the bowl. Cut the butter into small cubes and dump them into the food processor. Then pulsate the processor, about 20 2-second pulses.Your flour mix will be pretty coarse, like a corn meal. (If you don't have a food processor, you can do it the old school way with a fork [i did this before! arm workout!] and mix the butter to the dry ingredients until it creates that coarse texture) Add your dried fruit to the bowl and pulsate about 2-4 times. Then, dump the mix to a medium size bowl (pic. 1)

Add the maple syrup to the dry mix and stir with a fork (pic. 2); Add the heavy cream and mix with a fork or rubber spatula, mix it well, love (pic. 3). Then once it's so hard to mix it with that fork of yours, knead the dough with your clean bare hands. Who said making scones is easy? It's a arm workout. Once you create that sticky ball, move it to a light floured surface (pic. 4).  

Then I pressed the dough down, flatten as much as I can, then smooth it with a rolling pin, to a thickness of approx 3/4" (pic. 5). Using that star cookie cutter, I created about 24 stars; once I run out of space on the dough, I ball the scrapes together and repeat the flattening-cutting process until I use up all the dough (pic 6 & 7). You can use whatever shape you want. Or even make big scones buy cutting the dough in to wedges. Whatever tickles your fancy. Place them on top of a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper/silicon mat, and bake for 12 minutes, until top of scones become light golden. Remove and let the scones cool for about 10 minutes on top of cooling rack.

Then, go grab a cup of your favorite tea, sit by your window and grab a novel and indulge this fluffy, nicely sweet scone.

Gosh, I can't wait for the morning to eat these. I am holding my appetite!

moonbeams and bunny kisses,

Rima