Here is the first post for my baking/cooking blog! It will be super fun!
Ok, a little background and what you can expect here. It's just my husband and me in our apartment (well, with the two cats, but they rarely eat anything I cook).
The black one is Drizzt and the orange one is Claude. They are best friends. Because it's just Jonathan and me, I usually cook in small quantities. When I bake, however, I usually bake in large quantities and send the extra with my husband to work.
This is my kitchen:
It's what my grandma would call a "Two Butt Kitchen" meaning that it's so small that you can only comfortably fit two butts in the kitchen at one time. Would I like more counter space? Sure. A double oven? Uh, yah! Alas, that is not to be at this point in time, but I muddle through. One more thing about the kitchen: it rarely looks this clean. Very rarely.
Ok, here are a couple of things that I love:
This cooling rack. Sure, it looks like just a regular cooling rack, right? Well, hold onto your socks!
That's right! It accordions out! (Accordion is a verb, right?)
Boom!
It's now an even bigger cooling rack! So awesome! I am a big fan of cooling racks, but it can sometimes be hard to find a good one. I used to have the kind with collapsible legs. So, whenever I would set a pan or cookie sheet down wrong, the legs would promptly collapse and I'd have cookies all over the place. Not awesome.
I also love my food processor.
Any time I have to make a pie crust or anything else that requires cutting cold butter into flour, I use this puppy with the dough blade. Just don't tell my grandma. She'd be so ashamed. I actually used the food processor for the following recipe. Let's bake!
Snickerdoodle Scones
I love scones. I also love snickerdoodles. I got this recipe from bakingbites.com. I had all the stuff I needed at home. I used parchment paper on the cookie sheet. Seriously, people: parchment paper. Know it. Get it. Love it.
The cinnamon sugar on the outside of the scones gives them a nice crunch. My oven is notoriously fickle, so I had to keep a close eye on these, but they golden-browned nicely. They are delicious with a nice cup of coffee or tea. I followed the recipe's guideline for the size of the scones (1/6 of the dough) and they were pretty good sized, not too big, but not too small either. I also liked these scones because it didn't require me to roll out and cut the scones. (My absolute favorite cookies are frosted sugar cookies, but I very rarely make them because I hate rolling things out and cutting them.)
Here's the recipe:
Snickerdoodle Scones
2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons of sugar
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled and cut into pieces
6 - 8 tablespoons milk or cream (I used 1% milk)
1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract
cinnamon and sugar for rolling
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, salt and sugar. (I used the food processor for all of the butter-cutting and mixing.) Add butter to the flour mixture and use your fingertips to rub it into the flour, breaking the butter down into pieces smaller than a pea. Combine milk (or cream) and vanilla in a small dish and add 6 tablespoons to the flour mixture. Stir with a fork until dough comes together into a slightly sticky ball. If necessary, add an additional tablespoon or two of milk, but dough should not be too wet. (You want it a little sticky so that the cinnamon sugar will stick before baking.)
Divide dough into six even balls. In a small dish, whisk together 1/4 cup sugar and 1 tsp. cinnamon. Roll each ball of scone dough in the cinnamon-sugar mixture and flatten slightly onto prepared baking sheet. Bake for about 15 minutes, until scones are set and the edges begin to brown. Cool on a wire rack before serving. (They are really good slightly warm.)
I suppose you could make a powdered sugar-glaze for these, if you want to. I didn't think they needed it.
Enjoy!
