I AM BACK! Yes, it’s true, I’m really back. And I know, promises mean nothing these days, because I’ve made so many of them, and broken them right after, but I really mean it this time. Please baby, don’t go. I need just one more chance! It’ll be different this time!
Okay, but in all seriousness, life’s been kind of crazy. Yeah yeah yeah, it’s crazy for all of us, I know. I was definitely lazy during the month of December. But I really intended on getting some serious Drunk Squash in during the month of January. Unfortunately, though, I don’t have a bedroom right now and I’ve spent the past week living in my friend’s apartment. To say that I haven’t been baking or cooking much at all would be an extreme understatement. In fact, I would guess that 80% of my food intake has been quinoa mixed with hummus and hot sauce. Well balanced, eh?
But I recently went through my pictures and found documentation of a really great scone I made back in December. And I can call it “really great” without being accused of pride (or exaggeration) because it was quite a popular recipe on the interwebs a few months back. In fact, I took it upon myself to follow the links to find as many documentations of the Starbucks Pumpkin Scones as I could:
- http://www.food.com/recipe/starbucks-pumpkin-scones-214051
- http://sweetpeaskitchen.com/2010/09/27/pumpkin-scones/
- http://penniesonaplatter.com/2010/10/01/pumpkin-scones-2/
- http://www.momswhothink.com/bread-recipes/starbucks-pumpkin-scones-recipe.html
- http://www.lolfoodie.com/archives/2010/10/pumpkin-scones/
- http://rileymadel.blogspot.com/2011/10/pumpkin-scones-frankenstein-and-under.html
- http://theshoeboxkitchen.wordpress.com/2010/10/06/pumpkin-scones/
- http://bakemeblush.blogspot.com/2011/11/dearest-pumpkin.html
- http://livlifetoo.blogspot.com/2010/10/pumpkin-scones.html
- http://foodlibrarian.blogspot.com/2011/11/starbucks-pumpkin-scones.html
- http://gratefulprayerthankfulheart.blogspot.com/2011/10/pumpkin-scones.html
- http://www.weheartfood.com/2009/11/pumpkin-scones-a-la-starbucks.html
There you go… 12 different places to find the recipe. And I’m about to add the 13th. Actually, no, I’m not about to retype the recipe, you can find it on twelve other websites after all. So why am I even talking about these fabulous scones (besides simple pride in following the wise advice of many food bloggers)? Well, I did mine a little bit differently and wanted to share the idea.
When I made these scones, I was preparing for my final thesis seminar. My classmates and I had a breakfast potluck to celebrate finishing our theses, once and for all. I decided that I wanted to make scones, but one of my classmates was gluten free and I wanted to make sure that she could eat them too. I try to be inclusive, both because I have friends with gluten intolerances and know how much they miss out on during food events, and because, as a vegetarian, I also know the feeling of sometimes dreading potlucks. So I grabbed myself some Bob’s Red Mill All Purpose Gluten Free Flour and used that instead of all purpose gluten-full flour. Also, I didn’t have any pumpkin, but I did have a large amount of already-cooked butternut squash just begging to be eaten, so I used that instead.
I had never baked with gluten free flour before, and had always assumed that it would require a difficult task of mixing non-gluten flours in precise and confusing amounts. After I heard about the pre-mixed, all purpose gluten-free flours, I wondered if they would be more finicky or stranger than gluteney flours. To my surprise, using the gluten-free flour was so easy! And when I brought the scones into our meeting everybody was surprised to hear that they were completely glutenless. And that, my friends, is what I would consider a success.
(Also, for the record, bnut squash makes a great substitution for pumpkin. It’s a personal favorite of mine for its large ratio of squash meat to skin/seeds and its hearty natural sweetness.)
So there we go, I found a popular and foolproof recipe and, perhaps foolishly, decided to alter some basic parts of it. However, the story ends happily. You can turn the famous Starbucks Pumpkin Scones into successful Gluten-Free Butternut Squash Scones!
The Drunk Squash