Recipe: Blackberry Scones

Scones are really just a sugary, berry-sprinkled pizza.

After picking blackberries nearly every day for the past week, I had A LOT of berries that I needed to eat up (and I can only eat so much yogurt with berries). Earlier I made this blackberry muffin recipe, and this time I tried my hand at making blackberry scones.

I had never made scones before, and my mom happened to have this recipe (cut out from a magazine; unsure which one). This one originally called for dried cranberries, but we improvised with our fresh berries.

Ingredients
Scones

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2.5 teaspoons baking powder
• .5 teaspoon baking soda
• .75 teaspoon salt
• 1.5 sticks chilled margarine, cut into 6 to 8 pieces
• .75 cup dried cranberries
• 1 teaspoon grated orange zest
• 1 cup buttermilk

Glaze

• 1 tablespoon whipping cream
• .25 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons sugar

Directions

1. To prepare scones, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in large bowl. Add margarine and beat with electric mixer until well-blended. Stir in dried cranberries and orange zest. Pour in buttermilk and mix until blended.
2. Gather dough into ball and divide in half. On lightly floured board roll each into a circle, about .5-.75-inch thick. Cut each circle into 8 wedges. Place scones on lightly greased baking sheet. Bake at 400° F 12 to 15 minutes or until golden.
3. Meanwhile, to make glaze, combine cream, cinnamon, and sugar in small bowl. Set aside.
4. Remove scones from oven. Brush with glaze.

I guess I never realized that I get my habit of changing recipes out of convenience from my mom. She was fine with using butter instead of margarine; some of it was cold, some of it wasn't. We didn't have buttermilk, so we mixed milk and vinegar together to make our own. We didn't roll the dough in a ball and cut it in half. We just spread all the dough out into a circle on a baking stone and cut it like a pizza. And of course we didn't bother to make the glaze. It's already an unhealthy food: no need to make it worse. We baked ours for closer to 20 minutes, since we did one large piece that was probably thicker than called for. It might have ended up a little more golden, but it tasted good! And these were a lot less dry than I was expecting, so really the glaze isn't even necessary. Yum!