scones – knitting in the dark

Ooops-Those-Bananas-Are-Brown Scones! (Minus the two and a half that we ate before photographing.)

I pretty much stuck to the recipe this time, just swapping the two flours out for GF flour blend. I had to add a little extra flour when bringing it together into a dough because my egg was big and I guesstimated the amount of honey left in the jar was roughly the right amount, but it was probably more, so the mix was wetter as a result. I also cooked it for an extra five mintues again, because my oven is still slow, and the extra moisture needed to cook out. It was super hard to cut this into equal portions because it was sticky as and just wanted to glue itself to the knife, even with a little oil on the blade.

The flavour’s really great on this one, so I probably won’t modify it in the future, unless I want to change it up by adding nuts or choc chips or something. I might try using a flour like buckwheat or brown rice in place of the whole wheat, too, to try and get that deeper flavour in there.

Before, it was spite box cake. (Which was understandably underwhelming.)

Now, behold, It’ll-Do 3AM Scones!

I have never made gluten free scones before. I only vaguely followed the recipe, and I changed up the flavours. Still, turned out pretty great!

The original recipe is here

I replaced the pomegranate with chopped dried apricots. For the greek yoghurt, I dumped in a tub of strawberry Chobani without measuring and hoped it would do the job. (Given my baking powder is super old and there’s only one egg in this recipe, it definitely worked.) The chocolate was ¾ of a 180g block of Milky Bar, but it was sweet enough to not need more. Also, I had just under 100g of a block of butter left, and decided ‘it’ll do!’ because I couldn’t be bothered opening a new block. (It did.) They’re in American-style wedges rather than British/Australian style rounds, because finding my cutters at 3am was, like, nah, when I could just cut the dough into slices with a regular knife.

So, basically, after Emma has been gluten free for fourteen years, I broke my block to do with trying to make scones because it was late, I had a craving, and I decided that because I was fudging half the recipe, if it didn’t work, it didn’t matter. And they’re pretty great. The texture is cakey, but that’s normal for GF without added xanthan gum, and they’re sweet, soft inside, and have a nice crust. I didn’t even bother to egg wash them despite it suggesting to, and look at that colour! The balance of flavours is nice – the chocolate melted in, so there’s no chunks of that, but every now and then you get a surprise pocket of the flavour of it. The strawberry puree from the Chobani is a mild fruity note in the background, and the apricots are tart and add texture. I think the yoghurt has a lot to do with the nice softness inside. I’ve used sour cream in a number of recipes in the past, and it really makes a nice bake.

In the future, I might add another sharp note, because they are very sweet. A citrus glaze, or maybe zest in the mix. It could be more balanced, but it is certainly not going to be a chore to eat through this first batch.

ETA: I did cook mine for five minutes longer than the recipe time (20mins) but my oven is slow, so I expected to have to do that. If your oven is pretty accurate, you probably won’t need to.