Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Blackberry Scones

Next up in the blackberry baking adventures came some blackberry scones. I wasn’t quite sure how these would turn out, since there aren’t a plethora of blackberry scone recipes out there, the way there are for say, cranberry scones. I thought that perhaps there is a reason for that – maybe the blackberries are just too juicy to work in a scone. When I mixed the dough, it came out SO thick and SO heavy that I realized there was just no possible way that I was ever going to be able to stretch the dough out and cut it into circles. I’m not sure what exactly went wrong – maybe the blackberries were just too much – but boy oh boy was it dense. Rather than just give up, I decided to just squash all the dough into my springform pan and pop it in the oven and see what happened. Lo and behold, after baking for quite a while – scones! These were especially tasty with the blackberry jam that already happened to be be leftover in the lab from a previous scone smorgasbord brought in by our PI!

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Blackberry Scones
adapted from America’s Test Kitchen

Ingredients:

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 tablespoon baking powder
  • 3 tablespoons sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 5 tablespoons chilled, unsalted butter, cut into 1/4 inch cubes
  • 3/4 cups blackberries
  • 1 cup heavy cream

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 425F.
  2. Add flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse six times. Distribute butter over dry ingredients. Cover and pulse 12 times, each pulse lasting 1 second. Add blackberries and pulse one more time.
  3. Transfer dough to a large bowl and stir in cream with a rubber spatula until dough begins to form, about 30 seconds.
  4. Transfer dough to countertop and knead by hand until it just comes together in a rough, sticky ball.
  5. Press dough into a 9-inch springform pan, scoring the dough into 8 wedges with a knife.
  6. Bake dough in springform pan until tops are light brown and dough is cooked through, 20 to 25 minutes. Cut through immediately before cooling, then cool on wire rack for at least 10 minutes before serving.

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2 comments:

emilyandjeff said...

I love this blog series of berry treats! Would I have to make any adjustments to the scones recipe if I wanted to use strawberries instead?

EthidiumBromide said...

I think as long as your are flexible with the baking (i.e., the recipe did not call for baking in the springform pan, but rather for rolling out and cutting with a round cookie cutter, but my dough was WAY too sticky and dense to do that because of the blackberries), you will be fine. I would suggest cutting the strawberries if they are huge, though. If the extra liquid makes yours a bit less dense and you can roll yours out, go for it! Your baking time may be a bit different -- I had to bake mine nearly double the original recipe (it called for 10-12 minutes), but just check on it frequently and you should be fine. I say give it a try. :)

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