Baking Adventures - Shortscones ??

Dear Foodies,


This is what I conjured up for Nandita's WBB # 7 - Baking for Breakfast event. Will be back with the recipe in sometime :-)

Off-late I have been trying to bake a lil whenever I can manage some free time. I dont like using eggs and so keep browsing for recipes that dont need it. Substituting eggs in a recipe is tricky, as you more often then not have to compromise on the texture or the taste. I am still on the look out for egg-less cake recipes, so any of you who have some do share them with me :-).

But in the meantime I was also looking at recipes for cookies and scones too. That was when I chanced upon this amazing blog, Baking Sheetby Nic. She has a huge collection of recipes which are soo well written and neatly explained. The first scone I had was a cinnamon scone at Panera bread and it was love at first bite :-) , so the moment I saw the scone recipes on Nic's site I was really excited to make some at home. I was going through the list of cookies and scone recipe she has and found a lot of them that did not need eggs. Browsing through her recipes frequently gave me a picture of the basic method and I experimented with the flavors depending on what I had in hand. I have made chocolate chip scones, coffee scones and berry scones, all of which were absolutely delicious. I only made about 4-5 medium sized scones each time and so they vanished before I and my friends were done tasting them. I have been planning ever since to make a bigger batch that would last a few breakfasts alteast, but never found the time or the motivation to do so.


When Nandita unveiled the theme for WBB event to be Baking, I rushed to my apt that very evening to bake some scones. Well it was actually night by then, I went home at 11:00pm and started out :-) I planned on making scones, but once the dough was ready I was in no mood of shaping them like those triangles and so shaped them randomly like cookies or bit sized scones. I then realised that shortbreads are, vaguely put, the cookie shaped version of scones. So now I dint know what I had made.....and so I named them ShortScones ..hehe..

I am going to give you a rough estimate of the ingredients I used. As I am still learning how to bake the perfect scones, I would suggest that you go over the Nic's blog for her detailed recipes.

Ingredients:

Dry Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cup - All purpose flour
• 1/3 cup - Sugar, I used the fine powdered sugar
• 1 tsp - baking powder
• 1/2 cup - Butter, chilled and cubed ( I used half a stick of butter)
• a pinch of salt

Any of these: 1/3rd to 1/4th cup

• your choice of chopped berries (strawberries,raspberries,blueberries,cranberries)
• dry fruits and nuts (apricots, raisins, walnuts,peacans)

My choice:

1. 1/3 cup- Chocolate chips + 2 Tbsp - Cocoa powder
2. 2 Tbsp mango pulp + 1 tsp - Elaichi powder

Wet Ingredients: 1-2 Tbsp of

• Water or Orange juice/Lemon juice + a few drops of the zest or Buttermilk or Soymilk

Procedure: ( Preheat oven to 300deg F)

1. In a bowl sieve in the flour, salt and baking powder. Add the sugar and mix well, toss in the cubed butter. And rub it into the flour mix with your hands by applying slight pressure on the cubes forming a coarse flour mix.
   
2. Now add in your choice of berries/dry fruits/choco chips and mix well
3. Next add the wet ingredients a tsp at a time and get the flour mix together, so you can shape it. When using berries you will need very little of the liquid to do the job.
   
4. The mixture does not have to be kneaded, and should be loosely packed, shape the into a lil thick disc and make cuts with a blunt knife like you would to a pizza and place it on a parchment paper lined baking dish.
   
5. Bake for about 15-20 mins, until a tap on the surface gives a hollow sound and it has a wonderful golden brown color. You can also test it withthe knife coming out clean when done trick.
   
6. Break the individual scones along the cuts you made and enjoy one right out of the oven and try to store the rest if you can stop yourself from eating more ;-)

While baking these treats the way I have done them, keep in mind that they continue to cook for a little while after being taken out of the oven. The Cardamom- Mango rounds and nankatai were a lil soft when I removed them from the oven but turned crisp on cooling. So time them accordingly.

Chocolate Hearts :-)

I made a heart-shaped batch of chocolate chip + cocoa powder combo. These were my favorites, well ofcourse I shud add I am a huge chocolate fan !! Anything that has to do with chocolate or coffee or soft toys will grab me 100% :-) The chocolate chips that were at the center did not totally melt, but were warm when rite out of the oven and gave a nice gooey, chocolatey taste that was very very delicious. I dusted these with some icing sugar just for the heck of it :D I am going to try refining this recipe to get a near brownie taste soon.

Cardamom-Mango rounds

The second batch was with the cardamom powder and mango pulp, shaped as round cookies with a cashew topped on each. I arranged these cookes too close to each other in the tray and so they came out as one big cookie that I had to break. The mango pulp did not contribute much to the taste as the quantity was far too less to dominate. The cardamom powder was the ruler. This cookie very dearly resembled an Indian sweet, but niether me nor my friends could pin-point at the name though. Let me know if you try these out :-)

Savoury Nankatai's

I also tried out savoury Nankhatias taking hints from Jyotsna's recipe. Instead of 1/2 cup of sugar and cashews I added just 1/4th cup sugar and 2 tsp of salt. I also added some hand-crushed cumin seeds. I did add some vanilla essence but skipped the saffron in her recipe. I also dont think you will need 1/2 cup of butter, a little more than 1/4th of a cup ( 1/3rd of the stick) should be good, I found my biscuits too buttery and a little more flour would have helped.

These biscuits posed wonderful sweet and salty contrast to the other two. The cumin seeds in the biscuits added a very nice flavor, though I added just about a pinch of seeds, the flavor spread through every bite. Absolutely yummy !!

I warmed the chocolate hearts and Cardamom- mango rounds for 5 sec before eating them and along with a glass of warm milk or hot coffee/tea, made up our breakfast for a few days :-), all thanks to Nandita ofcourse for getting me to bake and thanks to Nic and Jyotsna for their wonderful recipes :-)

P.S: Here is Nabeela's recipe for scones. She has pics showing the usual method of shaping scones :-)