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Saturday, December 5, 2009

Orange Oat Scones - incredible texture!

I have caught up to November 18- these scones. I definitely haven't gotten the hang of the timing of cooking and posting enough to keep current, but I guess I'm getting there. Thank goodness the camera registers the date the picture was taken; too bad it can't take notes on what you did differently from the recipe, like a good little editorial assistant!
I saw these over at 101 Cookbooks, and it wasn't tempeh or bok choy, so I was excited to be able try a recipes of hers. She, Heidi, sounds like a great person, just more interested in more far-out ingredients than I am. But these were in my realm of possibility.
I am borrowing her finished picture, since what happened with mine was that I whisked them into several containers and brought them straight to work, warm. They really don't know what a bargain they're getting with me.
What did I do differently from the recipe on Heidi's site? Let's see:
3 cups whole wheat pastry flour --> 2 c a-p flour, 1 c whole wheat locally sourced flour
1/2 cup turbinado sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup (2 sticks) cold butter, cut into small pieces
2 cups rolled oats
zest of 1 orange --> zest of 1 unripe orange, zest of 1 ripe tangerine
1 cup buttermilk (made with vinegar)
1/4 cup coarse turbinado or Demerara sugar, for sprinkling (forgot for one of the two batches, but was still gorgeous)
2/3 cup dried currants --> raisins

And funny story about the zest. As a California girl, I was being kind of a snob about the oranges available here in DC. Didn't make the cut. But maybe that's also because I don't particularly like eating oranges. Yes, I know, shocker, something I don't like eating. My having never had strong fingernails may give you a clue as to why. At any rate, I didn't want to pay for an orange, or heaven forbid, a bag of them, that I wouldn't eat. So I cannily spied a coworker who'd brought in an orange for lunch the day before, and I asked if I could have her peel for the same item that day. Waste not, want not! Except that it was a tangerine that day, and I had no idea how that would affect the process. So the call went out, and another coworker donated her orange peel. However, back to my earlier point, it was yellow-greenish... so I used both. I think I discovered that tangerine peels have more oil than orange peels. In'erestin'.

After all that, I was richly rewarded by both the taste and the expression on my coworkers' faces- rapture! I think it's because I undercooked them by 1-2 minutes, so they were still a little mushy inside instead of dried out totally. GREAT recipe!

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