McGough Scones

I am sure you have seen them in coffee shops and chain bakeries. Large lumpy triangle things. I will every once and a while buy one to go with my tea and then am disappointed. They are dry and crumbly with hardly any flavor really just not all that pleasant to eat. So I thought maybe if I made them I could eat them at home with butter and jam and that would be better and so I set out to find a good scone recipe and found that in fact eating them fresh from the oven with jam and tea was much more pleasant. 

But then I had some at a tea house, they were not fresh from the oven hot but still soft and buttery and wonderful with the jam and clotted cream. So I determined to make my own recipe for scones that held up to cooling and still were wonderful. I think I have found success. You see how fluffy and delightfully light they are inside? So wonderful! And they are pretty easy and quick to make. The sort of thing that you can throw together just as guests arrive, then put the kettle on as soon as the scones are in the oven and have the tea and scones ready about the same time. The only thing I need to do now is learn how to make clotted cream as I have not seen any in our local grocery store. You can substituted whipped cream but its just not quite the same.

This is one of the few recipes I can call really my own, one where I have played with the ingredients, done a lot of research in to others recipes and what effects the ingredient have on the end product so I could get the result I wanted. When making them today with The Girl she asked what they were called and I told her I did not know. The first scone recipe I ever made were called "Lily's scones" so maybe as I was creating this recipe we should call them "Mommy's Scones" She was not a fan of the idea as that implies that only I got to eat them so she named them for me, these are officially "McGough Scones"




3 and 1/3 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon baking soda
4 and 1/2 teaspoon cream of tarter
1/4 cup cold unsalted butter, cubed
2 tablespoons vegetable shortening, in teaspoon sized proportions
 1 cup whole milk
1/3 cup plain yogurt
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon sugar

Sift or whisk together flour, salt, baking soda, and cream of tarter in a bowl. Work in the butter and shortening with your hands until well combined. the mixture should be slightly grainy and stick together when compressed. In a large bowl mix milk, yogurt, vanilla, and sugar until totally smooth. To this add the flour mixture.

You can, at this point, roll the dough out to about an inch think and cut with a biscuit cutter if you want the neat uniformity and attention to detail associated with English Tea. Or you can turn it out on some flour and work it a little, not really kneading the dough just improving its elasticity then roll and cut into squares, dividing those squared diagonally into triangles for baking. But I generally prefer to just plop a bit of dough on a greased cookie sheet and let them keep there lumpy shape.

You can add an egg wash if you would like them to have a nice golden color after baking, sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. I didn't this time. You can also add dried fruit. I love them with 1/2 cup dried cranberries and the zest of about half an orange. That is what is in the ones pictured. The zest is added to the milk and yogurt mixture and the cranberries are added after both the wet and dry have been combined before you turn it out if you are doing so.

Bake them on a greased cookie sheet for about 10 minutes in a preheated oven at 425 degrees. It should make about a dozen biscuit sized scones. You can leave them well spaced to get the look I did when I plopped them on there but squishing them together and letting them cuddle up while baking is quite alright as well and results in fewer dirty pans for me at least as I could not fit all twelve on one sheet and still give them room.

When fresh from the oven cover with jam or butter or cream and enjoy! But delightfully these keep there wonderful texture when cool so I suggest you make a batch for tea and enjoy whats left with breakfast the next day.

Beer Bread

For those of you who have noticed my To do list make bread has been on there for a while I can take it off finally! I made three different types of beer bread but first the basics. Beer bread relies on the yeast in the beer to rise. This produces a good soft bread with a sticky batter similar to banana bread and so it needs a bread pan too cook in. I altered the recipes I found some by adding a little dry active yeast to the beer and a lot more flour to get a more typical kneadable bread.

My Beer bread Recipe:

5 cups all purpose flour
6 cups bread flower
24 oz beer (two bottles)
one packet yeast
4 eggs (and one more for glazing)
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1/4 cup honey

Put room temp beer in a mixing bowl, add honey & mix
Add dry yeast & mix. Wait until the yeast activates & gets foamy (it will foam a lot)
Mix 4 eggs & oil
Add flours, mix & knead slowly adding the beer and honey mix - You may have to add more beer or flour to get the right consistency I'd start with 3 cups of each flour and add as needed. (Break time)
Let it rise to double size (I did this overnight in the refrigerator and then let it sit out to come to room temperature before preceding)

Knead, shape into loaves, put in an oiled pan or place on oiled cookie sheets (in replacement of the oil for this batch I used corn meal like some pizza places do)
Let rise again, be patient.

Mix another egg with equal amount of melted butter, beer, or just a well beaten egg will do.
Baste loaves with same.
Bake at 350 for 20 min, remove & baste again.
Bake another 10 min.

when shaping these loaves I simply divided the dough into thirds rolled them into snakes and braided the snakes into a loaf. I love the way they look they have a very rustic home made look.

This recipe makes four loaves. I made two plain, and two I fancied up a bit. one I added honey mustard, thyme, and shredded cheddar in the final kneading just before shaping and then after brushing with the egg I added some more shredded cheddar on top.

The other I added shredded pepper jack during the same kneading and put some on top to melt as well. It turned out lovely and I am very excited to have finally done it.
Thanks for visiting!

My Chocolate Chip Cookies

So for the Girl's parties I made cookies. I had gotten some Raspberry chocolate chips and so they did not come with the cookie recipe on the side of the bag that I usually use. I did a quick internet search and found tons of chocolate chip cookie recipes! I was surprise by how many there were for such a staple cookie. How was I to know which recipe to use?
So I asked for favorite cookie recipes from friends on Facebook I got quite a few suggestions and after filtering through tons of recipes and looking over the few I collected from friends I started to get a feel for the basic chocolate chip cookie and what changes could be made to get say a chewier cookie or a nice a crispy one. I decided that rather than picking a recpie I'd make my own.

MY CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES
1C sugar 1C brown sugar 1/2C (1 stick) butter 1/2C margarine 2 eggs 1 1/2 tsp vanilla 2 1/2C flour 1C quick cook plain oatmeal 1tsp salt 1tsp baking soda 12oz. chocolate chips Preheat oven to 375°F. Mix wet ingrdiance and dry separatly. Then add dry to wet. Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for 8-10 min.

I imagin it makes about 4-5 dozen but I started with an inapporprate flour to butter ratio and the cookies were a disaster. So after scraping the sheet clean and washing the stuck bits off I added another cup of flour and these turned out much nicer. But they were harder than I like cookies to be so the above recipe has a half cup less flour than I used in the cookies.
Thanks for visiting!