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By Sarah Condley

For the Scones:

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter cut into 1/4-inch cubes

1 cup heavy cream plus 1 tablespoon for brushing the scones

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 cup chopped fresh strawberries

2 tablespoons turbinado sugar

For the Vanilla Glaze:

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar

2 tablespoons milk

1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Line a large baking sheet with a Silpat baking mat or parchment paper.  Set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.

Using a pastry blender or your hands, quickly cut the cold butter into the flour mixture.  Mix until mixture resembles coarse meal, with a few larger butter lumps.

In a small bowl, whisk together 1 cup heavy cream and vanilla extract.  Pour the liquid ingredients over the flour mixture and stir with a spatula until dough begins to form.  Don’t over mix.  Gently fold in the strawberries.

Transfer dough to a floured countertop and gently push the dough together with your hands, just until it forms a ball.  Form the dough into a 10-inch circle by patting the dough and gently pressing the dough.  Don’t overwork the dough.  You want to work quickly so the butter doesn’t get too warm.  Use a sharp knife to cut the scones into 8 triangles.

Place scones on prepared baking sheet and put in the freezer for 15 to 20 minutes.  This will prevent the scones from spreading when baking.

Remove the scones from the freezer.  Use a pastry brush to brush the tops of the scones with the additional heavy cream.  Sprinkle the scones with turbinado sugar.  Bake for 18 to 23 minutes, or until scones are golden brown on the bottom and around the edges.  Let the scones cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes and then transfer to a wire cooling rack.

While the scones are cooling, make the glaze.  In a small bowl, whisk the confectioners’ sugar, milk, and vanilla together until smooth.  Drizzle glaze generously over the cooled scones.

B

rad and I typically visit our Farmers Market every Saturday morning and on one recent Saturday, someone had strawberries for sale. You can’t beat locally grown strawberries for their flavor and sweetness so we bought a gallon.  On our way home I was thinking of all the ways I could use those pretty red berries.  After making and eating a pie, having them in breakfast smoothies, and eating them straight from the bowl, I decided I’d finish up the gallon by making some scones.

I found today’s recipe for Strawberry Scones on the world wide web at twopeasandtheirpod.com.  After printing out the recipe I headed to the kitchen and gathered all the ingredients I’d need.  The first thing I did was rinse, top, and chop the strawberries.  I let the chopped strawberries sit on paper towels to absorb their extra moisture while I put the scone dough together (getting the excess moisture out of the berries prevents all that added moisture from messing with the scones).

In another part of the kitchen I combined the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt; giving the dry ingredients a good whisk to combine.  I added the cubed the butter and used a pastry blender to combine.  Note: Work fast so the butter doesn’t soften – cold butter makes for flakier scones. Next, I combined the wet ingredients and added them to the flour/butter mixture and stirred just until everything was combined.  I dumped the scone mixture onto my floured countertop and formed the dough into a 10-inch circle.  Again, don’t take too much time doing this because you still don’t want the butter to soften.  When the circle was the right size, I cut the disc into 8 pie shaped pieces, placed them on two parchment lined baking sheets and put them in the freezer.

I put all the dirty dishes into the sink and turned on the faucet to begin cleaning up.  I looked over and saw my chopped strawberries.  My eyes got big and I just about screamed.  I grabbed the scones from the freezer and stared down at them wondering what I was going to do.  How in the world could I have left the strawberries out of the strawberry scones I wondered?  I guess I was so worried about not letting the butter soften or melt that the last step didn’t enter my mind; I just wanted to get them cut and into the freezer before baking.

At this point I knew I could not put the dough back into the bowl and add the strawberries because that would make the scones tough so I grabbed some chocolate chips, some butterscotch chips, some toffee bits and some chopped pecans and began patting them into the tops of the scones.  I left one scone without any additions to see how it would taste.  Back into the freezer the scones went. Before baking the scones, I brushed the tops with some heavy cream and sprinkled them with some turbinado sugar.

Then I started making another batch, this time remembering to add the chopped strawberries.  I repeated the process and into the oven they went.

While the strawberry scones baked, I prepared the glaze for the unexpected batch.  Those scones were completely cooled and I drizzled the glaze over them.  They looked good and the glaze set up nicely.  There was A LOT of glaze and I decided that I’d just make half that much for the strawberry ones.  I did leave one of the chocolate chip scones without glaze because I figured the glaze would be too sweet for Brad and since I’d already messed up it couldn’t hurt to try them with just the sugar on top.

When the strawberry scones cooled, I drizzled the half batch of glaze over them and it seemed to sink right into the scones.  It was nothing like the first batch and I don’t know why.

OK, so now we needed to try these scones – like we needed 16 scones.  First Brad tried the one without any glaze and he said “it needs more chocolate chips,” but it’s good.  After a couple of bites, he tried a strawberry one and said he thought it was really good too.

The first scone I tried was one with butterscotch chips and lots of glaze.  It was really sweet, so I liked it.  Next, I tried some of Brad’s strawberry one and agreed that it was delicious.

I thought the full amount of glaze would be too much on the scones, but it really wasn’t.  But the half amount of glaze on the strawberry ones wasn’t too little either.

These scones, all flavors of them, were great (we did share with some of our friends and they also liked them).  This recipe is a definite Nailed It and I’ll be adding it to my self-made cook book.

Note: Scones are best the day they are made but do keep for several days. I recommend if you make 16 that you freeze some so you don’t over eat them over the course of a couple of days.

Local strawberries are probably all gone by now, but our blueberries are coming on strong so I might just have to try them in this recipe.  I’m sure you could use just about any fruit you like in this recipe.