What to Bake for Valentine's Day Breakfast

Happy Wednesday, My Lovelies!  Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, and I have the perfect thing for you to bake for breakfast:  SCONES!

I have been playing with scone recipes forever.  I've tried recipes with sour cream, heavy whipping cream, milk, buttermilk, eggs, no eggs...I think I've tried them all!  But I've finally figured out an easy recipe for scones that combines elements from several recipes I've tried.

Now the one thing that can totally ruin a batch of scones is over handling the dough.  Resist the urge to handle it!  Seriously, I barely touch mine!  ;P

Here in America, we tend to bake our scones in triangles.  We roll the dough into a round and score them or cut them into triangles and bake.  The English make theirs round, and I've found that they seem to be not as dry if they're round.

I love the way my recipe makes the scones rise higher than most recipes.  I learned the trick of using 4t of baking powder from the Fifteen Spatulas Blog.   You can see their English Style Scones Recipe HERE.  Our recipes are very similar, but I keep my butter cold, use heavy whipping cream, and I use caster sugar rather than regular sugar.  I've found that these little tweaks make a difference in the final product.  They are light and moist compared to most scones!

I should've taken a better photo from the side so you can see how they rise...but they almost triple in height.

Easy Scones

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour 

4 t baking powder

1/2 t salt

1/4 cup caster sugar

6 T unsalted butter (keep in fridge until ready to use)

1/3 cup whole milk (I use A2 milk)

1/3 cup heavy whipping cream

1 large egg (use the largest egg you can find.  I used a jumbo sized egg.)

Procedures:

1.   Preheat over to 425 F.

2.   Combine all dry ingredients in a food processor and pulse until combined.

3.   Take out butter and measure 6 tablespoons.  Dice butter and add to dry mix.  Pulse several times until you don't see any butter chunks.

4.   Combine the milk, cream, and egg.  Beat until smooth.  Reserve 2 T for egg wash.  Add wet mixture to food processor slowly while it's on low.  Once the dough looks solid, remove onto a floured work surface.

5.   Knead the dough with floured hands only a couple of times.  Lightly pat into a circle 1" high.  Using a round biscuit cutter, cut out four or five scones and place on a cookie sheet with a Silpat mat.  Make as many scones as you can with the scraps, but handle the dough as little as possible. (This recipe only makes about 6 or 7 scones with my biscuit cutter).

6.   Brush the egg wash on top of the scones.

7.   Bake for 13 - 16 minutes (check after 12 just in case) until they are golden brown on top.

Enjoy with butter, jam, honey, or lemon curd. Devonshire cream and whipped cream are delicious toppings, too.

This time I had a pat of butter and a tablespoon of strawberry jam on my scone.

I'm making a fresh batch for breakfast tomorrow morning.  

Do you cook anything special for breakfast on Valentine's Day?

Until next time...

Blessings!

Ricki Jill