Thursday, January 12, 2012

The Crooked Scone

If I were to open a bakery, I'd have to call it the Sunken Loaf. Or maybe the Crooked Scone. And if I did open a bakery, it would have a playground for babies to play in so adults could enjoy their baked goods in peace and quiet and babies would have somewhere to burn off some energy during the cold, cold winters (it's below zero here today; boo!). Then maybe people would come for the atmosphere and not notice so much that my baked goods have .... personality?

Assembled ingredients for scones

I'm pretty proud this week. After 2 months (from Halloween to Christmas) of eating whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted - resulting in an 11 lb weight gain! - I got back on the Weight Watchers band wagon and tracked, tracked, tracked my points. This week I lost 2.8 lbs! Still a long way to go to get rid of holiday weight, and even farther to go to get rid of pregnancy weight (yes, a year later, I'm still toting it around....), but I know from experience that success breeds success.

All stirred up
So, when I had a hankerin' for baking today (did I mention it's below zero with the wind chill??), I knew just what to make. I've followed Gina at Skinnytaste for some time. Made several of her dinner dishes, and only attempted one baked good - and it didn't turn out! So, I swore to stay away from "skinny" baked goods for good. But, this recipe. Looked SO good. Looked like good-sized pieces.  Low points values (for a baked good). All ingredients I had on hand. Perfect!

Skinny Buttermilk Chocolate Chip Scones
recipe from skinnytaste.com


Ready to knead


Ingredients:
  • 3/4 cup cold buttermilk
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 cup all purpose flour (Bob's Red Mill)
  • 1 cup white whole wheat flour (Bob's Red Mill)
  • 1 tbsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 3 tbsp chilled butter (must be cold) cut into small pieces
  • 3/4 cup chocolate chips
  • cooking spray
  • 1 large egg white, lightly beaten
  • 1 1/2 tbsp sugar
Directions:
Preheat oven to 375°. Combine the first four ingredients in a medium bowl, stirring with a whisk. Spray baking sheet with cooking spray.
Combine flour, baking powder, salt, in a large bowl, stirring with a whisk. Cut in chilled butter with a pastry blender, or you could use 2 knives, until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Gently fold in chocolate chips. Add milk mixture, stirring just until moist.
Place dough onto a floured surface and knead lightly four times with floured hands. Form dough into an 9-inch circle onto baking sheet, about 3/4" thick. Using a knife, cut dough into 12 wedges all the way through.

Brush
egg white over dough and sprinkle evenly with sugar.
Bake
until golden, about 18-20 minutes, depending on your oven.
Serve
warm.


First of all, I cut scone dough like I cut pizzas - uneven and crooked. Oh well. I guess some days I'll get a big scone and some days I'll get a small one.  It'll all even itself out.

Cut crookedly!

My scones are decent, but I wouldn't say I did a GREAT job making them. I've never made scones before, so I probably need to perfect my method. And probably - once again - follow the recipe a little better. Yes, I messed up again. I pulled my scones out of the oven and they are very flat, whereas Gina's are very raised. Lo and behold - I read the recipe wrong. I put in one TEAspoon of baking powder; it calls for one TABLEspoon. That probably makes a lot of difference, huh?


 Maybe my bakery should be called "Follow The Recipe" instead.


They taste fine; look a little weird. I think I'll try them - or a variation of scones - again someday. After I read and really pay attention to a few more recipes. :)

Hannah loved it, though. And why wouldn't she? She's only had chocolate a very small handful of chocolate a few times in her life. She probably was in baby baked good heaven!

2 comments:

  1. At least they were still edible. :) Saw your comment on Skinnytaste and had to check out what you did wrong. Guess I'm nosy like that! Have a lovely weekend.

    ReplyDelete