Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Raspberry scones (and a new hack for food photos)

Raspberry Scone

A while back, I mentioned that I was excited to try a couple new scone recipes. I have dutifully done so. Many, many scones have been eaten in an attempt to deliver the best recipe to you (the sacrifices I make!).

The winning recipe is a variation on one from A Handmade Life, by Molly Wizenberg, with the addition of fresh raspberries from our garden.

I also want to call your attention to the lovely photo, courtesy of my über-geek husband, David. He read about this hack for creating a light box for just this sort of thing and, the next thing I knew, he was in the kitchen building me one. It took less than an hour and was put together with simple materials we had on hand.

David using Strobist lightbox

Raspberry scones (adapted from A Handmade LIfe)
2 cups flour
2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
4T cold, unsalted butter cut into small pieces
3 T. sugar (plus more for sprinkling on top)
1 c. fresh raspberries
1/2 cup whole milk 1 large egg

Place dry ingredients in food processor and pulse a few times. Add in butter and pulse around 10 times (you want the butter pieces to be pea-sized). Mix egg and milk in a small bowl. Add to the food processor and pulse until just mixed. Turn out onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. The dough will be dry and powdery. Add raspberries and fold together with your hands, making a flattened mound. Do your best to incorporate everything but not to over knead. It's going to be messy. Once you've got a flattened circle of dough, cut into 8 wedges with a sharp knife. Sprinkle with a bit more sugar and bake at 425 degrees for 15-25 minutes (this varies due to the wetness of the berries. If you use currants instead, for example, it would only be 15 minutes).

Note: The food processor method here is not how she does it in the book — it's my own adaptation. One of the tricky things about scones is that the dough really can't be handled much, or the butter will soften too much and change the consistency. I really recommend experimenting with this. It may take a few tries before you find a method that works for you. If you've had success another way, please let me know!

Enjoy!

3 comments:

Adam Calihman said...

Fantastic recipe! I grew the raspberries in the yard and wanted a recipe for fresh berries, no heavy cream, and from readily available ingredients. This worked great and at high altitude (5280ft - Colorado). Not overly sweet either. Thanks for sharing! I'll keep this one on file.

Strongrrl said...

Adam: So glad you liked them! I'm always modifying recipes to suit my tastes, and scones have been quite tricky! Thanks for letting me know of your success.

Adam Calihman said...

No prob. One more thing...I ran out of butter, only had 1/2 the amount called for, and made up the difference with some refrigerated vegetable shortening. It worked fine.