Well, just like I warned you, I have some baked goods to share today. On Saturday I had to wake up very early (well, very early for me) to take a test, so of course I spent Friday night staying up too late making scones. Procrastination always makes me feel that cooking is imperative. I find a recipe that I absolutely must try this very moment whenever I really should be studying or sleeping. It’s a good way to use up those extra ingredients, though. And this time, the magic ingredient was ORANGE.
I think I mentioned before that, without fail, I get oranges in every one of my CSA boxes. So, needless to say, I eat a lot of oranges. This time, though, I decided that I wanted to cook with them. Even though I love eating oranges in their natural form, for some reason I have been half convinced that I don’t like them used as an ingredient in baked goods. I don’t know where I got that notion from, except maybe orange candy (which is sometimes a really weird godawful taste). But really, why did I think I didn’t like orange baked goods?
Despide that silly idea, I decided to search out a recipe that uses oranges. So I made my way to lovely Foodgawker, searched “orange,” and found a slew of recipes. Unfortunately, though, most of the recipes just wanted some zest, while I wanted to use an entire orange (or more!). Finally I found a recipe for Orange Scones on Pastry Affair‘s blog. And it looked just perfect!
Orange Scones
Slightly adapted from Pastry Affair
Ingredients:
-1 3/4 cup flour
-4 tsp baking powder
-1/4 cup sugar
-zest from 1 orange (or do more, go crazy!)
-pinch of salt
-5 tbsp cold, unsalted butter cut into little pieces
- 1/2 cup orange juice (use the orange you zested!)
- At this point, the recipe calls for sour cream, but I didn’t have any so I used a splash of whole milk (I know that that’s a vague measurement, but really I just used enough to create the correct consistency in the dough)
- 1 egg
-1 tbsp milk
Glaze:
-1/2 cup powdered sugar
- 1 tbsp orange juice
(I ended up doubling these amounts for more glaze)
Make it Happen:
1. Preheat oven to 400F.
2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, sugar, orange zest, and salt.
3. Add the butter (at this point apparently one can use a pastry tool, I used my dirty hands) until everything is crumbly and in small chunks.
4. Stir in orange juice and whole milk until it comes together. Don’t needlessly overmix, though!
5. Roll scones into little flattened balls on your cookie sheet. For bigger ones go for tennis-ball sized, for the smaller ones stick with a golf-ball size.
6. Whisk together milk and egg and then brush on your scones. Let them sit for ten or so minutes.
7. Bake for about 12 minutes, or until the tops are a lovely brown color.
8. Cool, then glaze!
So anyways, these scones really did me right. I could have eaten the whole shabang in one sitting if I had been feeling less self-controlled. But instead, shared them. But let’s be real here, there was a high probability that if left to my own devices those scones would have been in my belly in ten minutes flat. Enjoy!
The Drunk Squash