My sweet tooth was acting up, so I pulled out Small Batch baking, intending to make a small batch of cookies, when I got distracted by the scones. Now, I've never actually had scones before, but I knew they were supposed to be good, and it's pretty hard to go wrong with copious amounts of butter and chocolate, so. And they are very, very good. This recipe made three scones.
- 1 cup all-purpose flour, plus extra for the work surface
- 2 tbs plus 1/2 teaspoon sugar
- 1 teas baking powder
- 1/4 teas salt
- 5 tbs cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
- 3 to 4 tbs semisweet chocolate chips
- yolk of one medium egg
- 1/4 c cold half and half (I managed not to notice this until I was halfway through the recipe. Talent, pure talent. Instead I used what we had, which was skim milk. They were still amazing. I'm not sure I want to think about how rich they would have been with the half and half.)
- Place a rack in the center of the oven and heat to 375. Lightly grease the baking sheet and set it aside. (I used spray grease instead of butter. Worked fine. I also used the trusty toaster oven. Why heat up the whole oven for three scones?)
- Place flour, 2 tbs of sugar, baking powder, and salt in a medium-sized bowl and whisk to mix.
- Sprinkle the butter onto the flour mixture, and use a pastry blender to cut butter into flour until there are no lumps bigger than peas. (Or, you know, use a fork and some elbow grease.) Mix in the chocolate chips.
- Place the egg yolk and half-and-half in a small bowl; whisk to blend. Add to flour mixture. Toss with a fork utnil a soft, moist dough just comes together.
- Sprinkle a little flour on a cutting board. Put the dough on it. Flour hands, and knead dough gently 6 times. Pat down out into an inch think disk. Cut into thirds with a sharp knife. Put on baking pan, spacing two inches apart. Sprikle remaining 1/2 teas of sugar evenly over the tops. Bake until golden on bottom and just pale golden on top, 20 to 22 minutes.
- Allow to cool, and serve warm or at room temp. (Or, you know, straight of the oven.)
These were crazy, crazy good. They're also crazy calorific (something like 240 calories for 1/6 of the batch) because of the butter and the chocolate chips. If I'd done the math on them, I might have made something else, since part of the reason for making a small batch of stuff is so that I can satisfy yon sweet tooth and not have stuff lying around, but they're so calorie heavy that I should try to stretch them out. But they're really, really good. I'll probably try to Cranberry Orange Oatmeal Scones next, which look a heck of a lot healthier.