Rainy Sundays - A Dog and a Dram of Whiskey

It has rained or sleeted all day. Just not a good day to go out. So after church and before finishing a book, I made scones. The recipe is below.  If you wish a mix - go to World Market (and some Safeway stores) and get the Sticky Fingers brand of scone mix that they carry. They are excellent. Mine was simple, a basic recipe with wild Maine blueberries and glazed with butter, whiskey, cream, and sugar.

Scones are usually best on those cold grey mornings, when children trudge sullenly off to school, when the buildings creak strangely and dark shadows shiver and scratch on the walls, days when your body aches for the strength of another and the smell of the sea. Days of a fire upon a cold hearth, warmth in the kitchen, and perhaps a drop of Jameson's. In this case, a little Jameson in the glaze.

Scones
2 cups All-Purpose King Arthur Flour
1/3 cup Sugar
1 tablespoon Baking Powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 pinches Ground Nutmeg or Cardamon
1 teaspoon finely grated orange zest (the peel)
6 tablespoons Unsalted Butter (well chilled)
1 extra large egg
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1 1/2 teaspoons Penzey's Mexican vanilla

Vanilla Sugar
(I use Penzeys brand or you can make your own by putting a whole vanilla bean, sliced in half with the insides scraped out all of which is stirred into 2 cups of sugar in a mason jar and let it sit week).

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients and mix well. Thinly slice the chilled butter into the bowl and cut into the dry ingredients with a pastry cutter until the flour and butter look like coarse meal.

In a clean medium-size bowl, mix all the wet ingredients. Add the wet ingredients to the dry, mixing as little as possible, just enough to incorporate wet and dry together.  If you like, add in a handful of wild blueberries, just at the end of the mixing.

Place the dough onto a flour-dusted pastry board (or another clean surface) and knead a half dozen times. Shape it into a round that's about 10 inches across. Place on cookie sheet sprayed with non-stick spray.  In my oven at 375 F oven, it took roughly 30 minutes to bake to a light golden color. (check it at 20).You can also deeply score the dough before cooking into 8 wedges. (reduce cook time 10 minutes though). Cool on a rack.

click on photos to enlarge

No recipe for the glaze, just a couple of teaspoons of butter, melted. Stir in a teaspoon of cream, a drop of vanilla if you like, a good splash of whiskey and enough powdered sugar to make a glaze. Put it on the scones as they come out of the oven, they taste like a melancholy moan of a Celtic tune, best shared with a friend, or a loyal dog.

The day is already getting brighter.