Strawberry and Blueberry Scones

This week has gone by mad crazy fast! I can't believe it's almost Friday. I only have about 3 weeks left of school. Hallelujah! In some ways, it is a little bit sad, but honestly, I can't wait until summer and then NYC in the fall - although with the 80+ degree weather that is expected this weekend, I would say summer is already upon us in full force. Anyway, enough reminiscing and on to more interesting things - baking that is. Today in french class, Ms. Jones was out with the french exchange students at the beach and we were left to basically fend for myself. Of course I spent half the period doing nothing and half the period looking at recipes. I then realized that Friday morning we have french first and I immediately blurted out "Who wants scones tomorrow?" Almost everyone's response was a hearty "yes," and so began my adventure of making scones. I have never made them before, but they didn't seem all that hard. Batch one turned out great, a little undercooked maybe - or so my dad said - but other wise good shape and form and nice aroma. The second batch, using a different recipe was a complete disaster. Note to self - never use fresh strawberries in a blender; everything gets mushy and unusuable. So after a failure batch, but still boxes of left over strawberries, I went back to the first recipe again. All of this result in one set of yummy blueberry scones and another set of what appear to be rather good looking strawberry scones, although the strawberries do look a little mushy. I hope they like them in the morning!

adapted from the foodnetwork.com

Ingredients

Scones:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold, cut in chunks
• 1 cup heavy cream, plus more for brushing the scones
• 1 cup fresh blueberries (or 1 cup of fresh strawberries – whichever you prefer)

Lemon Glaze:

• 1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 2 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted
• 1 lemon, zest finely grated
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Sift together the dry ingredients; the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar.
3. Using 2 forks or a pastry blender, cut in the butter to coat the pieces with the flour. The mixture should look like coarse crumbs.
4. Make a well in the center and pour in the heavy cream. Fold everything together just to incorporate; do not overwork the dough.
5. Fold the blueberries into the batter. Take care not to mash or bruise the blueberries because their strong color will bleed into the dough.
6. Press the dough out on a lightly floured surface into a rectangle about 12 by 3 by 1 1/4 inches. Cut the rectangle in 1/2 then cut the pieces in 1/2 again, giving you 4 (3-inch) squares. Cut the squares in 1/2 on a diagonal to give you the classic triangle shape.
7. Place the scones on an ungreased cookie sheet and brush the tops with a little heavy cream.
8. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until beautiful and brown. Let the scones cool a bit before you apply the glaze.

Glaze

1. Mix the lemon juice and confectioners' sugar together in a microwave-safe bowl. Stir until the sugar dissolves.
2. Add the lemon zest and butter.
3. Nuke it for 30 seconds on high.
4. Whisk the glaze to smooth out any lumps, then drizzle the glaze over the top of the scones. Let it set a minute before serving.

Banana Nut Muffins

So every few weeks or so we bring in muffins to my history class because it's first period of the day. Last time I brought in cupcakes which were so good, but I figured cupcakes aren't the best breakfast food, so this time iI decided to make muffins, specifically banana nut ones. The recipe came from the cookbook How to Cook Everything. It was very simple, but since it called for molasses instead of sugar and less milk because of the bananas, it was very thick, so in the end, I needed to add about 1/2 cup milk more then the recipe called for. INGREDIENTS *3 tablespoons melted butter or canola oil plus some for greasing muffin tin *2 cups all purpose flour *¼ cup molasses or honey *½ tsp salt *3 tsp baking powder *1 egg *1/4 cup milk *1 cup mashed ripe bananas *½ cup roughly chopped walnuts (optional) 1. Preheat oven to 400* F. Grease a standard 12-cup muffin tin or line with muffin liners. 2. Mix together dry ingredients in a bowl. 3. In a separate bowl, beat together the egg, milk, butter or oil, molasses and banana. 4. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour the wet ingredients into it. Using a large spoon or rubber spatula, combine the ingredients swiftly, stirring and folding rather than beating, and stopping as soon as all the dry ingredients are moistened. The batter should be lumpy, not smooth, and thick but quite moist; add more milk or other liquid if necessary. 5. Spoon the batter into the muffin tins, filling them about 2/3 of the way full and handling the batter a little as possible. 6. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes, or until the muffins are nicely browned and a toothpick inserted into the center of one of them comes out clean. 7. Remove from the over and let rest for 5 minutes before taking them out of the tin.