The Resurrection and the Life

Behold!  [Insert your favorite part of Also Sprach Zarathustra here.]

On the off-chance that anyone might be offended by any of the foregoing, I do apologize, but also submit that nothing takes the edge off rancor like a freshly baked blackcurrant scone.  So [insert angelic chorus here], behold this:

The following recipe is my latest version of the scone recipe found on p. 63 of The Gourmet Cookbook (Gourmet Distributing Company, New York; 1956 printing).

Sara's Gourmet-ish Blackcurrant Scones

2 cups flour
1 T baking powder
3 T sugar, plus extra for sprinkling
½ t sea salt
4 T butter
2 jumbo organic eggs, plus extra egg white from another one you'll have for breakfast in the morning
1/3 C lowfat milk
6 oz. by weight dried blackcurrants
cinnamon for sprinkling

1.  Preheat oven to 400°F.

2.  In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt.

3.  I usually melt the butter and pour it in and then gently toss everything together until it is unthoroughly mixed but sort of evenly distributed, but technically, and especially if you have a nice countertop electric mixer strong enough to do it for you, you're supposed to cut the butter while still cold into the dry ingredients until you have rice-to-pea-sized (depending on the cook) granules of butter-flour.  Do not overwork it, especially if you do it my lazy-assed way, as premature exposure to liquid will wear out the baking powder.

4.  In a separate small bowl, beat the eggs, then beat in the milk thoroughly.

5.  Dump the wet into the dry, and then very gently rubber-spatula everything about, scooping from the bottom, until almost mixed.  Dump in the currants, and continue with the gentle spatula-ing until they are evenly distributed throughout the now springy and moist dough and there are no big pockets of dry ingredients.

6.  By hand or by ladle, gently plop dough onto a cookie sheet in approximately ½-to-¾-cup servings.  I got nine plops out of one bowl of dough, and they all fit onto one cookie sheet.

7.  Beat up the egg white you have set aside for glazing.  You don't want to beat it firm as for a soufflé or meringue, just break down the viscosity a bit so that you can get individual brushings instead of one big glob.  Then brush egg white over the tops of each dough plop.  You don't have to do this obsessively evenly.  In fact, it will be more interesting in your mouth if there are holidays.  You also don't have to coat down to the cookie sheet.  Just aim for the highest third of the available surface area, and you'll be doing just fine.

8.  Sprinkle sugar lightly over each glazed dough plop.  Then sprinkle cinnamon very lightly over each glazed dough plop.

9.  Bake 15 minutes, then serve hot with butter.

I made nine scones.  Half an hour later, there were five scones.  Only two of us live here, and I have not given any scones away to the neighbors.  [Insert sad music here.]  They really are quite delicious with fresh coffee.

A word about ingredients:

• I use the sodium-free baking powder by Hain Celestial.  It uses potassium instead of sodium.  I do not think it is quite as powerful as sodium-based (and I'm not just saying that because of the melted butter thing; I've been using it for quite awhile, and this is what I always observe), but I do think it is better for us, and if we're going to eat this much butter, well, the way it's better for us could prove rather important.

The reason I mention this, though, is not to go on and on about healthy eating, because frankly any time you are eating hot buttered scones it's not your physical health you are addressing, no matter how organic, low-fat or low-sodium one or two of the ingredients might be.  No, the reason I mention this is that the original recipe calls for 2 teaspoons of double-action baking powder.  I believe that 2 teaspoons of double-action baking powder would be just about equivalent to a tablespoon of sodium-free baking powder.  If you are using conventional, sodium-based, double-action baking powder, you can probably get away with 2 teaspoons.

• For sugar, I use organic Florida Crystals.  Florida Crystals are simply evaporated sugar cane juice, not refined like white sugar.  They have a slightly more molasses-y flavor and are a bit less intensely, chemically sweet-tasting than conventional white sugar.  I keep a vanilla bean in my Florida Crystals, too, so there's an extra fragrance note in there which adds a dimension to everything I bake.

The original recipe calls for 2 teaspoons of sugar, not 3 tablespoons, and this is also good but even when using refined white sugar results in a product dramatically more savory than most Americans expect in a scone, something closer to a fruit-laced American-style dinner biscuit.

• The original recipe calls for "light cream."  All we had in the fridge tonight was lowfat milk, so I used lowfat milk.  I have made these scones eight million ways, including using whipping cream.  I have made these scones with soy milk and vegan margarine, and also had them come out quite, quite tasty.  It's a very flexible recipe.  It does not, however, work well with whole wheat flour.  Whole wheat flour + this recipe = nasty little stomach bombs.

• The blackcurrants I used for creating this version of this recipe are not my usual fare.  Basically, we were shopping zombies in a desperate hurry in Trader Joe's this fine Saturday afternoon, and I was looking for organic raisins which I did not find because they had reorganized the store since the last time I was there.  However, I saw a bag of dried blackcurrants and, since I was only looking for raisins so I could make yummy scones, started to drool at the idea of yummy blackcurrant scones and snatched them.  It was only after I had opened the package and dumped the entire contents into the dough that I discovered that (a) they weren't organically grown and (b) they had other ingredients besides blackcurrant in every blackcurrant, namely "glucose-fructose syrup (wheat), lemon juice concentrate, palm kernel oil."  Let me tell you right now that although I may have bought them even though they were not organically grown, I would never never never have bought them with all these other ingredients in them.  I feel a little tricked, actually, and a little pissed off.  I realize "caveat emptor" and all that, but the label on the front of the package says "Dried Black Currants."  It does not say "Sweetened Dried Black Currants" or "Dried Black Currants (Sweetened)" or "Sweetened Dried Black Currants with Lemon Juice Concentrate and Palm Kernel Oil."

They are delicious, and they made delicious scones, but I think it is absurd -- ABSURD -- to sugar-sweeten fruit, especially if you are then going to add lemon juice concentrate to tart it up, or even just to preserve color.  Just use the f*cking fruit the way nature intended.  And what the hell is palm kernel oil doing in there?

(sigh)  Let's just look at the pretty, pretty scones.  Soothing.  Soothing.

Comments

[TheAmpuT]

Okay. Not to commandeer your blog, but I have a story.

Did you know that while I was in culinary school LEARNING TO BE A CHEF, that I was dating a British guy?? And that I would make him scones FROM A BOX, then hide the box, and...yes...put ingredients and whatnot on the counter to make it look like I made them??? LOLOLOL He would swoon over them, and me, and how much I reminded they reminded him of his childhood. (gawd, I can practically hear him calling me "dahling")

[Sara]

Oh, commandeer away. That's hysterical.

Scones are really basic, as you know, just the most simple of soda-bread type things. For those who don't know, there's no reason a good mix can't be quite successful; as with any prepackaged and processed food, just watch for an overabundance of sodium and for the odd unidentifiable ingredient, for excess sugars, and for trans fats and hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated fats.

My mother used to make scones with Bisquick. I thought they were quite repulsive. I thought anything that used Bisquick was quite repulsive, actually. At the time of this writing, the ingredients of Bisquick are not available online at the Betty Crocker website, but General Mills, the parent company, swears the formula has changed since I last tasted it -- which would be about 1973. Blech. I can only hope it's changed for the better.

[Bipolarlawyercook]

I am totally a labeling rageaholic. I hate that stuff. I'm the annoying lady reading the ingredient list in the middle of the aisle, while you're trying to get around me and Get.Done.And.Get.Out.

[Sara]

I am right there with you, sister. But look, you slip one time -- ONE TIME -- and look what happens!

They made blackcurrants fattening! They did! In a single serving (¼ C) of these, there are 110 calories, 10 of which are from fat. Supposedly there are six ¼ C servings in this tiny little package, but honestly, if I were snacking on them, I would eat the whole package without even thinking about it. And if I hadn't read the label, I'd have felt perfectly fine doing it. It's fruit! What can it hurt?

They have the balls to call them "dried," but I call them candied. Of course they taste good! Candy tastes good! But fruit sold as dried fruit, and not as sweetened dried fruit, should not have added sugar -- or palm kernel oil! -- in it.

IMO.

Good thing I was just making scones.

[alphabitch]

It was scones. That comment I made somewhere about getting up really early and having to make huge quantities of a baked thing? I think it was scones. I also, at this particular restaurant, had to make muffins, but they were easier, and reliably good - the recipe was the same every time. The scones were a pain in my ass, partly because of the enormous quantity, which had to be divided into several different kinds of scones, two of which changed every day. It's much easier and more pleasant to make smaller quanitites of scones. My favorite kind of scones are fairly sweet, with lemon zest and candied ginger.

Later in the morning -- and less frequently -- we sometimes made the lemon shortbread crusts for the lemon-basil tarts on the dessert menu. Or these fabulous lemon-orange pound cakes, which we would later fry up in clarified butter and serve with a dollop of moscarpone and some kind of exotic citrusy brandied fruit syrup. And fruit.

My favorite part of that job, though? The first thing I did, after riding my bike over there in the dark, was turn on all eight front burners and put peppers on to roast -- habaneros and jalapenos on a little screen, and a few anchos or whatever else the daily special needed, and then huge red bell peppers -- turning and watching the skins char, whilst also chopping like 2 or 3 entire heads of garlic and an an enormous pile of whatever fresh herbs we would need. And then roasting big baking sheets full of red grapes and chopped red onions. And then putting the peppers in big metal bowls and letting them steam for a while; then scraping the charred skin off and chopping them up.

Mmmm. Maybe I'll cook something today.

Glad there's a new Mr. Coffee in the house. I actually had instant coffee this morning, even though I have coffee beans. I actually like the kind of instant I get at the mexican grocery down the hill from my house, and I only wanted one cup.

Bisquick has in fact changed quite a few times over the years; it is actually worse, and not better. And the lowfat kind is especially hideous.

[Sara]

Oh, good grief, I am so hungry now! I really crave chiles rellenos, since you mentioned the roasting peppers -- aaaaah -- but I don't have time to make them today, plus I don't have any poblanos. When I buy my organic produce on Tuesday, you know what I'll be looking for.

I cannot imagine making hundreds of scones at a time. Two dozen is the most I've ever made. The issue I come up against is always over-handling the soda in the baking powder, which is why I no longer roll or pat out and cut the dough. I'm sure professionals have techniques I know nothing about, but in my experience, the more you handle this dough, and the more you wait, the more rising you lose.

The coffee we drink is the best coffee I've ever had, Dean's Beans, roasted right here in Eastern Massachusetts. It's organically grown, better than fair trade, and beautifully, beautifully roasted, never burnt or bland. Our favorite right now is the Berkeley Shark Bite. Highly recommended, no matter how good that instant tastes! ;)

[elizabeth]

Hmmmm, not much of a scone maker or baker but I will say: butter is BETTER with just about anything. And I MISS trader Joe's - ahhh the good times I had wandering up and down those aisles. I so miss trader joes - I am glad that with coffee and scones your comfort is satiated.

[Sara]

Elizabeth, thank you. The thing is, I like scones (though I prefer them with masses of clotted cream and raspberry jam and/or lemon curd), but I do not love them. My true love loves them, and when I make them, he feels loved. When he feels loved, I feel happy. So yes, I am more comfortable having both scones and coffee on hand, but while the coffee is a direct chemical dependency kind of thing, the scones make me happy via a slightly different route. :)

[Mike Daems]

I agree with your thoughts on the labeling for the dried black currants, they should read Sweetened Dried Black Currants. It's almost impossible to have a dried fruit without a sweetner involved, unless you want to use Freeze Dried which is typically 10x the cost of infused dried fruit. That's the difference, we aren't talking about a sun dried product either, you are talking about a dried fruit that goes thru an oven, you need a syup/sweetner to add weight to the product, so it can retain is structure and taste. If it didn't it would come out like cardboard. The glucose-fructose syrup is actually a healthier sugar/sweetner than what is in most dried fruits in the USA. High fructose corn syrup and sucrose are in most of your dried fruits. It's much better for you then High Fructose Corn Syrup. The lemon juice is in there to preserve the product, Palm Kernal Oil is the european version of sunflower oil. There is less than 1% of oil on the product and that's there to keep it free flowing.