Hearty Scones

Unfortunately, I don't get to do very much baking at my new job here in Toronto. Since I don't get my fix there, and I really have aspirations of becoming a great baker, I've started baking and experimenting a lot at home again. I've also taken out this book from my local library—trying to keep some sense of instructed learning.

These scones are one of my home experiments. I have made the recipe so many times, I can't remember all the flavours combinations I've tried, but I've listed most of them below. I was hesitant to share this recipe, because they are super dense, and only slightly sweet. I also typically use malted grains in them, leftover from James' beer brewing, and I'm pretty sure that's not a pantry staple for everyone. But, along with decorating with royal icing and rolling out dough, they are my primary baking activity at home right now, so I decided to go ahead and share. James and I really love them.

For this recipe, I always use fruit that is either on sale or about to die—the stuff that's 50% off at the grocery store. That's part of the reason I love the recipe so much—it's flexible, and I can use whatever needs to be used up in my fridge (so much nut pulp and so many juiced lemons...). I've taken to calling them Garbage Scones, but I thought Hearty Scones was a better title for the blog...

Hearty Scones

(makes 12 scones)

Ingredients:

• 250 grams flour (some combination of whole wheat pastry flour and whole spelt flour)
• 58 grams oats
• 36 grams nut flour (I use dried hazelnut pulp from making Hazelnut Milk)
• 8 grams baking soda
• 4 grams salt
• 56 grams coconut oil, cold and in small portions
• 100 grams eggs
• 80 grams honey
• 2 grams cinnamon
• up to 120 grams of mashed, malted grains leftover from beer brewing (optional)
• a generous amount of chopped fruit, berries, nuts, citrus zest etc...

Instructions:

1. Combine dry ingredients.

2. Whisk together eggs, honey and any flavourings that need to be with the wet ingredients

3. Cut coconut oil into the dry ingredients, as you would a pie dough—lumps of the oil covered in flour should remain.

4. Add wet ingredients to dry, along with fruit, nuts, or whatever you've chosen. The beer grains would go in now too. Mix just until dough comes together—do not overmix. 

5. On a lightly floured surface, turn out dough and form a ball. Flatten to approximately 1½-2 cm thick and, using a fluted cookie cutter (mine was about 6 cm in diameter), cut out scones. Place on a lined baking pan and brush with egg wash or milk.
6. Bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes, or until golden in colour. Cool completely before eating or storing—depending on what you put in them, they will last at least 4 days.

Notes:

I typically use about 175 grams of whole wheat pastry flour, and the rest whole spelt flour—I like these scones very dense.

Some flavours I've tried include:

• Lemon Zest, Cranberry & Apple
• Cranberry & Nectarine (my favourite)
• Walnut
• Apple & Walnut
• Blueberry & Cranberry (pictured)
• Banana & Walnut (Banana makes the dough much wetter)
• Banana & Apple

James likes to brew his own beer, and he's left with so much beer malt at the end of the mash, we started adding varying amounts of it to these scones—it results in a wetter dough, a moister scone and adds a bran-like taste.

I typically let my dough rest in the fridge once the coconut oil has been cut into the dry ingredients—to make sure the coconut oil stays cold.

My oven is way out of whack. According to my oven dial, I bake them at 400F. According to my oven thermometer, I bake them at 350F.