Emily's Hot Dish

Eric and I had been dating about 6 months when Valentine’s Day rolled around. We’d been together long enough that he, I think, expected some pressure from me for him to make an event of it. He’s later told me that he realized he wanted to marry me when I mentioned that the holiday was coming up, asked what his thoughts were, and then told him I thought we should screw it because I hate Valentine’s Day. 

Not in the way you all might think, though. I can’t remember a time I was single on Valentine’s Day. I’m not bitter, weeping softly into my chocolates while I watch a terrible Lifetime Movie and plan elaborate weddings for my cats while I wear a Snuggie™. I’ve just come to realize it’s generally a terrible idea to go out for dinner on February 14th. Every restaurant is crowded, the service is terrible, the meal will be half as good and twice as expensive, and there’s TONS of pressure on the date to be romantic and perfect. No thanks. 

Instead, we stay in, order pizza, and play video games. We go out other nights of the year and we tell each other that we love one another every single day. Lately, though, we’ve had a lot of pizza. I thought I’d make a special meal instead – steak, wine, candles, etc – for us to enjoy together. We managed to eat while Eleanor was taking a nap, and then played Beatles Rockband. A step up from pizza, but still true to our tradition. I’ll post the recipe next year in time for you to plan your own special Valentine’s Day in. 

Today I met a really nice woman at Whole Foods. She’s going to make scones for her boyfriend for Valentine’s Day, but feels like she isn’t very good at baking so she had a mix to help her. I assured her that making scones from scratch was well within her capabilities and told her I’d send her the recipe, but she was nice enough to check out this (now largely defunct) blog and she said terribly complimentary things about it in an email to me, so I decided to really help her with the scone project and put up step-by-step instructions. 

Let’s talk a bit about baking mixes. I’m against them. I think in large part they’re a scam perpetrated against baking-shy or –phobic people who, for whatever reason, think they can’t bake or are bad at it or that it’s difficult or somehow beyond them. The thing is, most mixes contain little more than flour, leavening, sugar, salt, preservatives, and sometimes flavoring. If you’re going to the trouble of baking, mixing those things together (minus the preservatives, of course) is the easiest part! You’re going to have to get out the eggs, milk, oil or butter, and mix-ins anyway, so why not do a tiny bit more work and be able to say you made it from scratch? As far as I can tell, there’s no good reason not to. You’ll eat fewer preservatives, it’s significantly cheaper, and you can feel smug about baking from scratch. 

Scones are a great place to start if you’re new to baking. They’re easiest to make if you have a food processor, but you can also use a pastry knife. In theory you can use two knives like scissors in place of a pastry knife, but I’ve never had much success with that method and a really high-quality pastry knife costs, like, 12 bucks at Williams-Sonoma and it will last forever. To make scones, you don’t need to do any creaming or much blending – it’s largely just mixing the flour with the leavening, salt and sugar, cutting in the butter, then adding the mix-ins and the liquid and stirring until it looks like dough. There’s a bit of kneading at the end, but it’s not very challenging. Then you just pat the dough into a disk, cut into wedges, bake, and enjoy! Let’s get started. 

You will need:

2 cups all-purpose flour (10 ounces)
1 cup heavy cream or half-and-half
1 T baking powder
1 t kosher salt (or ½ t table salt)
3 T sugar
5 T cold butter
1 Meyer lemon
½ cup crystallized ginger

The first thing to do is to set up your mise en place. Make sure you have everything measured out, chopped, and ready to go. This way you won’t have to stop while you’re cooking to look for an ingredient, and you’ll be sure that you have everything you need to complete the recipe. Measure out your flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, and cream.

Finely dice the crystallized ginger. The easiest way to do this is to cut it into narrow strips, then turn all the strips 90 degrees and cut them again into dice. 

Zest the lemon with a Microplane grater or a lemon zester or other grater if you don’t have a Microplane. If you don’t have a Microplane, get one the next time you’re out shopping. Bed, Bath, and Beyond sells them for under $15 and you can use one of those coupons they’re always mailing you. My Microplane is absolutely invaluable in my kitchen. I use it for grating parmesan, ginger, zesting lemons, and a myriad of other tasks. 

Cut the butter into cubes by first cutting lengthwise down the stick, then cutting lengthwise again, then several times crosswise. 

Put the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder into your food processor and pulse several times to mix it all up. 

Next, scatter the butter cubes over the flour mixture. Pulse it 12 times (or use a pastry knife), until it looks like this: 

Now dump the mixture into a bowl and add the ginger and the lemon zest. Use a spatula to mix the ginger and the lemon in. Don’t worry if the zest sticks to itself a bit – you should be able to mix it into the flour mixture easily. The flour will help it distribute evenly. 

When everything is mixed together, pour the cream into the bowl and mix it up. The motion you want to use is less of a stirring motion and more of a scraping or folding motion. Use the spatula to scrape the sides of the bowl and fold the flour that’s on the sides inward, turning the bowl as you go. If you keep at it, you’ll end up with dough that looks like this: 

Turn the dough out on a clean counter or butcher block or pirate map or whatever work surface you’ve got. Knead it a bit until it all sticks together and forms a ball. Pat the ball into a disk that’s slightly domed and about 6 or 7 inches in diameter. Cut into eight wedges (like a pizza) with a large knife. 

Now (or maybe 15 minutes ago) would be a good time to put an oven rack in the lower-middle position and heat the oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil. Note: do not use waxed paper. The wax will melt into your scones and it will be terrible. Not that I’ve ever done that, or anything. 

Place the scones on the baking sheet, then bake for 15 minutes. I like to turn the baking sheet around halfway through so that the scones bake evenly, but it’s not the end of the world if you don’t. When they’re done, the scones will be baked all the way through, golden brown on top, and turning dark brown on the tips. 

Serve them warm with a thin slice of butter, a dollop of whipped cream, or a spoonful of lemon curd if you have some. I imagine they’d also be good with berry jam. 

(Seriously, this recipe is so easy a 2-year-old could do it.)