Sunday, February 6, 2011

spice scones!

I had not made scones since I was in Morocco, but I loved them very much and had them in the back of my mind for a while recently as something I needed to make. Lately, Settlers has been, well, completely out of control at our house. The main reason I don't completely hate the game is that some sick part of me loves playing but also that it has made us more social in some ways. In addition to playing a lot among the housemates, we have had way more visitors in the past few weeks coming over to play. This has also encouraged me to cook things because I know it will quickly get eaten up and be appreciated. So, I was commissioned to make the homemade oreos the other weekend, and last Monday I decided to make scones along with my regular dinner. All the house visitors put an end to the scones expeditiously, and I ended up making them a couple days later so that my housemates got more since the influx of visitors reduces our per capita consumption of treats.

When Courtney came to Morocco and taught me how to make the scones, she used cardamom and candied ginger, which is really delicious. We also, evidently, added more of the liquid ingredients than normal, so the scones were a little more moist than normal. I also made them with chocolate chunks instead of ginger in Morocco,  and that tasted nice but obviously different. Here, we don't have candied ginger or, as far as I can find, ground cardamom, so I have changed things up a bit to make the recipe my own. Now it is more of the traditional dry scone and is just a sort of spice flavor, which I really like and smells wonderful as you are mixing the dough.
Whole cardamom pods:
 Dry ingredients with the crushed cardamom seeds on top:
 The dough really takes kneading by hand to come together, but it will. Or, you can just add in more of the wet ingredients and they will be a different consistency but still work.




3 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
¾ tsp ground cardamom or cinnamon*
dash nutmeg
1 egg
1 cup yogurt/crème fraiche (I have used a wide variety of substitutes and it always seems to work)
½ cup sugar
1 stick butter

Preheat oven to 375 Fahrenheit.

Mix dry ingredients first. Add stick of butter (cubed into small pieces). Add egg, yogurt, sugar, and ginger. Mix together until thick dough mixture forms. The dough really takes kneading by hand to come together, but it will. Or, you can just add in more of the wet ingredients and they will be a different consistency but still work.

Grease cookie sheet and form scones into balls or triangles. Cook in oven for around 25 minutes until light golden brown.

Notes: *I did not have ground cardamom in Bulgaria (or know where to get it), so I replaced it with cinnamon and then got whole cardamom and crushed a few seeds that I mixed in. They added a lovely and fragrant smell.

Makes about 12 scones

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