Irish Cream Scones, no lace

My name is Catherine and I am a Scone Bore. 

I have come to realise that, when it comes to the subject of scones, I find it almost impossible not to bore on about how I prefer scones to be. So, to try and spare you the worst I will just say that:

1. these are delicious and ultra-easy to make scones

2. sweet scones don't need raspberry butterscotch lace topping even if it is truly delicious

3. I might make the 'lace topping' to serve with plain (no sugar) scones and cream.

And that's all I'm going to say on the subject.

Well not completely all. There's the making of the scones to talk about.

These scones use all cream instead of butter so there's no rubbing the butter in. I threw it all into the bowl and mixed it with my trusty bone-handled knife which reminds me of my grandmother. It wasn't a very wet dough but came together nicely. 

I love raw scone dough. It's a shame to cook it really. 

Rose includes a tricky step where you press the dough into a round cake tin. This makes a perfect circle you can cut into triangles. It is a good idea but I just pressed my dough into a rough-ish circle.

As I mentioned, the recipe gives you the option of making a raspberry butterscotch lace topping for the scones. I feel the title may mislead the unwary baker. I had a picture in my mind of a scone with a lacy pattern of raspberry cooked into it. It turns out it's actually a (delicious sounding) sauce to drizzle on the finished scones. Maybe lace means drizzle in American English? Or maybe I have an overactive imagination? 

I thought about making the sauce (it would be lovely on ice-cream) but the whole attraction of scones for me is the maximum 20 minutes from getting out the bowl to putting scones on the baking rack. That and the raw dough.

Next week we're making Pizza Rustica. Yay!

The most delicious strudelly biscuit

Do not wait. Do not think. Do not stop. Go straight home and make these. You may want to stop for some ice cream to eat with them but that's the only diversion you should make. These are seriously delicious (not really biscuits and not really strudel) and you do not want to miss out. If you've read my other posts you won't be surprised to learn I did NOT wait the recommended 6 hours after baking to try these. I don't think I even made the 6 minute mark. And I just kept on 'trying' them. Eventually I rushed some over to my neighbour, just so I could truthfully say I hadn't eaten them all myself.

These are the rather prosaically named (for Rose) Cookie Strudel from the Baking Bible. I'm not sure I would have chosen to bake them, if left to my own devices, because the picture doesn't do justice to the flavour (how could it?!) plus it's always a bit trying to make this kind of pastry in the heat. I love Rose's rugelach but they always end up looking like they fell out of the oven when I make them at Christmas. Of course I've learnt some new skills over the last (almost) year; in particular the benefits of refrigerating dough/biscuits at every stage to help combat the effects of the heat and humidity.

Actually you might be slightly misled by my 'do not stop' advice since you have to wait a number of hours for the pastry dough to firm up in the fridge before you can finish these. And if you live in a very warm climate like Darwin you need to refrigerate during the shaping and before the baking too.

You can see that my dough came out very wet. It looks like cake batter almost. It was quite tasty but not really rating highly on the delicious scale for raw dough. 

It was a miracle that (after overnight in the fridge) that wet dough was able to be rolled out (using plentiful amounts of flour) into a thin rectangle (with some emergency refrigeration in between).

The scant filling of walnuts, currants and cinnamon on top of apricot jam makes this a fairly cheap biscuit/dessert to make. 

Now that my workmates have discovered phylliscaroline there are no baking secrets anymore and I fear I may have to make a batch for them to avoid outrage and retribution for not sharing. I might need to make it double batch. Surely I couldn't eat a double batch myself before I got to work...?

Next week the Alpha Bakers are making (the long winded) Marble in Reverse with Custom Rose Blend Ganache Glaze.

A little Swedish nugget

Even allowing for poor light and a mediocre photographer, my Swedish Apricot Walnut Bread loaf could not be considered handsome. The Alpha Bakers are baking an out-of-the-ordinary savoury-ish bread this week. It was designed to be a torpedo shaped rye bread with some dried fruit and nuts. Mine turned out more like a little Swedish nugget with a fading blue rinse*.

It all started with a biga or two. I made a mix of bread flour, rye flour, yeast and water; left it to ferment for six hours and then (forgetting to mix it) put it in the fridge for a three day rest. After a period that may or may not have been longer than three days I started to wonder whether I had left it too long (or exactly how long I had left it). After consulting my Alpha Baker buddies I got nervous about giving the bread a bitter taste from an over-developed biga. So I ditched that batch and made another one.

This time the biga rested for only 2 hours in the fridge because I'd run out of time for anything more. Then it went into some water with walnuts, sultanas and apricots. I found some lovely fresh walnuts but used them in another recipe so I didn't have quite enough. I put in a few extra dried apricots which I chose to cut up and mix in with the dough (instead of following the instructions to place them carefully into the dough later). The dough seemed pretty wet and un-dough-like at this point. I felt a bit doubtful.

[For those who are dying to catch up on the latest in the golden raisins saga, you're in luck. Some more googling established that they are in fact what Australians refer to as sultanas but they have been treated with sulphur dioxide to keep them light coloured. So I just used the run-of-the-mill brown ones. Golden ones are undoubtably prettier but how good is sulphur dioxide for you?]

The dough was left for its first rise which looked quite passable. When I came to give it a four corner stretch and fold, the fruit seemed to be the most substantial thing about it. Hmmmm, a little more doubtful.

I put it in the fridge overnight for its second rise as per instructions. The next morning I took it out and left it to warm up for over an hour. At this point the dough was looking like it had had a more interesting Saturday night than me. Where was the springy, puffy dough I'd been expecting? Doubt turned into low level depression.

I shaped it into a boule form so it would fit in to my convection microwave (I learnt from my panettone experience) and after another rest, put it in to bake with a little bowl of boiling water since ice can't really fit under the 'shelf'. (Still waiting to hear from you about fixing my oven, Baumatic...)

The little nugget which came out of the oven showed no evidence of oven spring and was certainly what I would describe as rustic. I waited an indecently short time to cut into the loaf.  Having put off the shopping while I finished the baking, I was starving. I slathered some pieces with butter and was pleasantly surprised by the sweetish earthy flavour. I ate a few more pieces. With lots of butter.

The next day just to be sure my hunger hadn't skewed the results I ate a few more slices with thick butter and found it delicious again. 

I was still doubtful about the heavy texture and lack of spring but the flavour was good. I do think it would better with fewer apricots amd more walnuts ('oh really, thinks Rose, you mean like the actual recipe?').

PS: While I was baking the bread I misplaced my iPad cover (I use my iPad to take the photos). I found it when I took the bread out of the oven, attached to the bottom of the baking sheet (it has a magnetic hinge). It looked quite crispy, it may have been slightly overcooked...

*Older ladies of my grandmother's generation used to get their hair set each week and dyed with a bluey-grey rinse. I'm not sure if this inexplicable practice transcended national boundaries? I can only hope this horror was confined to suburban Australia.

Pride goes before...

Oh dear. We're making English Dried Fruit Cake this week and we're going to start with a game. You have to look at the photo and pick the mistake.

Can't pick it yet? If you're a serious cake person, you may be able to diagnose the problem from this picture. (Hint: it's not a photo from the recent comet landing)

Yes, a rookie mistake - too much raising agent from using the wrong flour. (I had to restrain myself from using a sad face emoticon here)

In Australia ,as in the UK, we have two main flours for general use. Self-raising flour which, as its name suggests, contains raising agents; and plain flour, the equivalent of all-purpose flour in the US. DESPITE taking a photo of the offending article, I still failed to notice I had taken the wrong flour out of the fridge (another adjustment made for the hot, humid weather).

As an aside, special pastry or cake flour is not generally used here. Although it's now available on supermarket shelves, it's not part of our baking culture (which mainly springs from the UK and Europe) and is not specified in recipes. In fact I tried cake flour once (inspired by something I read about flour and a softer crumb by RLB I believe) but was really not that keen. A lifetime of making and eating cakes made with unbleached Australian flour (which has a relatively higher protein content) has apparently left me with a taste for a more robust cake crumb.

Australian flour for domestic use is unbleached. Recipes for lighter cakes such as the Victoria Sponge often contain a mix of flour and cornflour to achieve the lightness that, according to Rose, is achieved by using bleached flour in the US. While Rose specifies bleached flour in this recipe for English Dried Fruit Cake and many others, I decided that, unless we're making a sponge type cake, I'll be happy with using a good quality plain flour. Thanks to Google I found that the flour I use has a reasonably low protein ratio of 7.7g per 1kg. Phew! Who'd have thought I'd know so much about flour and protein?!

I guess we'd better get back to the cake itself. As several Alpha Bakers commented, it's a doddle. Haha. And it is really. It doesn't even require any creaming of butter and sugar.

It's not really like a classic English fruitcake which has strong spices; dried fruit like sultanas, raisins and currants; and the dreaded mixed peel. It starts with a baker's choice mix of dried fruit which is cut up and soaked in hot water (and a bit of brandy since I found some in the fridge).

 The flour and raising agents are mixed with toasted pecans and the drained fruit.

 Sugar and butter are melted together and the fresh apple and eggs are added.

There seems to be a blank in my photos when it comes to mixing the dry and wet ingredients together. I think this is where I realised my mistake with the flour and was too busy crying into the batter to take photos. Or I may have been swearing...

I could tell when I touched the top of the almost cooked cake that things were not well. There was no spring, only rubberyness. And depression (mine not the cake's).

I cut a piece not long after I took it out of the oven. Tinny. Almost inedible. More depression.

On the plus side I had fruit distribution that the CWA* ladies would be proud of thanks to the coating of flour.

In fact, after a day the flavour of the cake had improved, although I thought the flavour of the pecans jarred a bit.  I'm wondering if they were less than fresh. I've resolved, in the spirit of an Alpha Baker, to try it again and will post a photo in the next couple of days.

Right now I'm off to drown my sorrows in a piece of fruitcake. Well, someone has to eat it.

UPDATE

It's hard to believe that the second time making this cake I almost made the same mistake again. And I almost gave up at that point. But I soldiored on, cutting down the nuts (walnuts this time) and increasing the dried fruits, using mainly dried figs and prunes with the fresh apple. And it was much better with a much improved texture and flavour. I'm not sure it's a cake I'd make again but that might just be the trouble I had making it. You'll have to excuse the night vision photos.

*Country Women's Association (with a fearsome cake making reputation)