Selective Palate

So I woke up this morning with the urge to bake. Since I don’t eat a lot of baked goods, or more accurately I shouldn’t eat a lot of baked goods I thought it would be nice if I baked up some nice treats for the guys and gals at M’s work place. Last time I did this I made buttery (yummy) scones you may remember. But in doing so I ended up leaving someone out since they are vegan. I did not want to do that again so I decided to try my hand at some vegan scones this morning.

I found a recipe online at Recipe Zaar and tweaked it a bit to my tastes. I ended up with Oatmeal Cranberry Scones. They were quite good. They were a little different that the moist, buttery scones I made before but they had a nice sweet taste and were just slightly crumbly, very good with coffee. For all the non-vegans I whipped up some orange honey butter to go along with them.

Here is what I did….

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups whole wheat pastery flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
1 t. cinnamon
1 t. orange zest
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
1 cup old fashioned oats
1/2 cup dried sweetened cranberries
1 t. vanilla extract
1/3 cup almond milk

First mix all the dry ingredients until well combined then add in the shortening a little at a time until mixture begins to look crumbly. Stir in the oats and the cranberries. Then mix in the almond milk and extract just until a dough comes together. Turn out on a floured surface and roll to about 1/2 thickness (or so) and cut into, well whatever you like. Times I have used a glass for nice rounds, or you can cut them into squares and then wedges. In this case given that tomorrow is Valentines Day I cut them into heart shapes. ENJOY!

Happy Valentines Day All!

Well at least it was for me! The other day I was having company at around 10am, so me being the good host that I am realized while making a pot of coffee that I had absolutely nothing to serve with said coffee. So I quickly jumped on the lovely internet for a quick scones recipe. I knew I had everything, or a least I thought I did. I was going to use an Ina Garten recipe because from my understanding scones are her thing, but she called for a whole cup of heavy cream. Now not that I have anything against the nectar of the gods but since I have been on this health kick, I didn’t have any on hand and I just could not sub an entire cup of reduced fat milk for cream so I moved on. In my quick googling I found a nice easy recipe from Anne Burrell. I like her and she only called for a 1/2 cup of cream and plenty of butter! That I thought I could live with. Scones also worked out well for a quicky breakfast because everything needed to be chilled and since I only had about 30 minutes to mix, bake, clean up, and set up I could have used all the time I could get! Well needless to say they came out great and I even I had a little dough left over for the next day.

To accompany the Cherry Almond Scones I made this yummy honey butter by just whipping up a stick of softened butter with a GOOD tablespoon of local honey. I couldn’t stop tasting it, you know to make sure it was good enough.

Well all tolled everything came out great but I had way too much left over; scones were my breakfast, lunch and dessert! The next morning I still had leftovers and the left over dough so I baked them off, and sent M to work with them. I told him he was not allowed to come home with left overs or I might do something crazy like ya know eat them! However, I was able to grab 1 hot from the oven to go with my coffee before he left and hoo boy when the butter melts on top… lets just say its as close to heaven as I will probably get!

If you’re interested in the recipe check it out. I subbed the cream for low fat milk and I only had about 3/4 cup of dried cherries left. You really could use any combo of dried fruit and nuts though it would all taste good. She also made her scones very large. I used a cup and cut them in circles and I managed to get a little more than double the amount and they were the perfect size.

Cherry almond scones with honey butter