You may not know this about me...but I love fall. It's my favorite season, followed very closely by spring. Something about the transitions..I just love it!
This fall I've embraced the various seasonal foods. I'll take the next couple of days to catch you up to what's been in my kitchen. But let's start with what I made most recently. We just had a house-guest. I feel that whenever possible, fresh baked goods should await a house-guest. It's just how I was raised. And this was a special house-guest, it was Matt's best friend Richard. He was in town so the boys could attend WhiskyFest NYC. (side note...if any of you are interested in whisky check out Matt's blog http://whiskeyapostle.com)
So...in honor of fall, and Richard, I made some pumpkin scones. Now, I'm not really a scone girl. I don't know if it's the taste or the texture or if it's just a mental block. There's something about the word scone that sets me a bit on edge. But we were just at a fantastic b&b upstate (Creek Locks Bed & Breakfast) that had scones one morning for breakfast, so I guess scones were on the brain. And I've been eating as much pumpkin and butternut squash as I can get my hands on lately, so...I decided to scone it up. I think part of the reasoning for this was a somewhat sub-par pumpkin bread I made last week.
I'm totally scavenging this recipe from another cooking blog, so think what you will of me. But below you will find the recipe for Pumpkin Spice Scones. If you want a more thorough accounting of the process went to to make these scones, then please feel free to visit the other blog - it's quite interesting! I somewhat followed the recipe. I added a little more pumpkin then called for, and that was about it. As previously stated...I love pumpkin.
Courtesy of Pinch My Salt
(This recipe takes about 15 minutes to come together and 15-20 minutes to bake)
(Makes 8 scones)
Pumpkin Spice Scones
* 1 C. all purpose flour
* 1 C. cake flour
* 1 1/2 t. baking powder
* 1/2 t. salt
* 1/2 t. ground cinnamon
* 1/2 t. ground nutmeg
* 1/4 t. ground allspice
* 1/4 t. ground ginger
* 6 T. unsalted butter
* 1/2 C. raisins (optional)
* 1/3 C. pumpkin puree
* 1/3 C. heavy cream
* 6 T. brown sugar
* 1 t. vanilla
Plus ingredients for icing (see below)
* 1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Get out a baking sheet and line with parchment paper (not required but makes cleanup easy!).
1a. Cut the butter into small pieces, put it in a small bowl and put it back in the refrigerator.
1b. In a medium bowl, combine both flours, baking powder, salt, and all spices. Whisk together well. Place bowl in freezer (refrigerator is fine if you have no room in freezer).
* 2. In a separate bowl, combine pumpkin, heavy cream, brown sugar, and vanilla. Whisk together well. Put this bowl in freezer (or refrigerator) and take the other bowl back out.
2a. Get the butter pieces out of the fridge and dump them into the bowl with the flour mixture. Cut the butter into the flour using a pastry blender or rub it in with your fingertips until it resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in the raisins if you are using them.
* 3. Get the liquid mixture out of the freezer and pour into the flour mixture all at once. Stir with a wooden spoon until everything is just moistened. The dough will be very crumbly, this is the way it should be.
3a. Turn the mixture out onto the counter and push the pile together with your hands. It should stick together fairly well. Knead it just a couple of times until everything is together. Don’t knead it too much or the dough will get too sticky.
* 4. Pat the dough out into a rough circle, 3/4 to 1 inch thick. Cut it like a pie into 8 pieces. Place pieces on the baking sheet so that they are not touching.
4a. Bake scones for about 15 minutes at 425 degrees. They should be light brown on the bottom, the tops will darken as they cool.
* Icing:
- For ginger molasses icing:
*Stir together 1 C. powdered sugar, 1 T. molasses, 1-2 T. milk, and 1/4 – 1/2 t. ground ginger (to taste). Adjust the
amount of sugar or milk to make the icing the consistency you want. It should be pretty thick.
- For cinnamon icing:
*Stir together 1 C. powdered sugar, 2 T. milk, 1/4 – 1/2 t. cinnamon (to taste). Again, adjust amounts to change
consistency. Icing can be brushed on or drizzled.
Now, this recipe has two options: with raisins & without, and thus two frosting options. I went sans fruit (the ill-fated pumpkin bread last week had dried cranberries and I just wasn't having it) and the suggested molasses-ginger icing. The icing was divine. I made the scones/frosting the night before and I feel like the ginger flavor intensified slightly overnight, but not in a way that made it overpowering. It would make me nervous to go too heavy on the ginger however. I may or may not have overmixed my scones slightly, as the dough was somewhat sticky when I got to transferring it to the baking pan. However, this gave it a surprisingly nice muffin texture.
So there you have it...perfect for any fall morning sunny and warm or dreary and drizzly.
Enjoy!!
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