Cooking Confidential

Well, here I go again:
I have been trying to recreate the scones my sister Jenny always made when she lived with us 30 years ago–she had moved back to St. Paul from the North of England where near the Scottish border where she had been cooking for an archeological excavation. At the time, I noticed that she never used measuring implements, but even though I presumed I would carry on after she moved out, I didn’t bother to stay her hand, and empty the ingredients into measures to record what it was she was actually doing: Naturally enough, I suppose, I just presumed that there was an actual formulation behind all this. Which there wasn’t, which I discovered to my sorrow after she’d moved to Texas….

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

1 cup white whole wheat
1 cup  unbleached white flour
1 cup plain old bleached all purpose
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup sugar

Rub in 1/2 cup unsalted butter

Lightly beat 2 eggs, and stir in 2/3 cup buttermilk and about another 1/3 cup whipping cream.

Stir in at least 2/3 cup golden raisins (I guess…I just dropped in some handsfull of raisins until it looked right to me)

Stir the egg/milk/cream mixture into the dry ingredients. Portion out into generous mounds on a parchment lined baking pan– I made a dozen (I think… I ate one, David ditto, and I think Aaron took two…)

I baked them at the 400 for about 10 minutes, then turned on the convection feature of my oven to finish– it’s so nice for browning scones in a shorter period of time that they take to bake.

Very, very nice.
P.S.: Why the two different kinds of white flour, you might well ask. Not only my own experience, but some of the more food science-y info that abounds these days, has shown that different types, and even brands, of “white” flour bake differently. I decided to make my own blend– the “bleached” seems to give a softer product (great for cakes, brownies), while the unbleached definitely has more substance and flavor (breads like my oatmeal rolls, crisper cookies). I think it brought me closer to Jenny’s scones than I’ve ever gotten!