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More Scones The last post was all about a basic Cream Scone recipe. It is a great starting point and with sugar in the mix is a “sweeter” dough. I also love a more savory style of scone. This is another recipe that I have found works very well and it will please a crowd! Let's face it – adding bacon and cheese to something can only make it better... This recipe is a bit different in method since we don't want to use the food processor which would pulverize the cheese and bacon. This recipe uses a stand mixer to start and then will add the final ingredients by hand. For a great variety – make both these and the cream scones – I've never had any complaints! Well, enough of this, let's get started...... Measure out the ingredients before you start. Cut the butter into small chunks, about ½ inch. Have a baking sheet with parchment or silicone baking mat ready to go. If you are going to mix and bake right away, go ahead and preheat the oven. As with the other recipe, a cooling off in the fridge won't hurt these at all. Put the dry…

To many folks, scones are those rock hard “pastries” you find at certain coffee shops. If you've ever had a chance to taste a “real” English scone, you know that they are nothing like these hockey pucks. In fact, in Britain, these baked goods are actually known as Rock Cakes (pretty appropriate!) The scone is the standard tea cake of Britain. They should be fluffy and delicate and more closely resemble a southern biscuit. Below is a good basic scone recipe. The cream scone is much like a blank canvass and can be dressed in many, many ways. In England, clotted cream or a great jam would be served with the scones. I am including a lemon glaze if you want something to top these with. This recipe is made in a food processor and can be put together very quickly. Measure out the ingredients before you start. Cut the butter into small chunks, about ½ inch. Put the dry ingredients into the food processor and run it to mix the ingredients. Next, sprinkle the butter over the dry ingredients and pulse about 5 times to “cut” the butter into the dry ingredients. You want to still see “pea sized”…

One of my favorite “finger foods” to make for appetizers or parties is Gougères. The simple description is a cheese puff, but I always put ham in mine. The dough is the basic pâte àu Choux pastry dough that can be used for so many different items. This is a fairly simple dough to put together and is a technique that can benefit every cook. This dough is used to make profiteroles, cream puffs, éclairs and many more. Even the beignets in New Orleans use a form of this pastry. The dough consists of 4 basic ingredients – liquid, flour, fat and eggs. In the recipe I use for Gougères, I use whole milk as the liquid and butter as the fat. I also add ham and cheese. After all, if something is really good to start with, adding pork and cheese can only make it better. If I can find it (and afford it) I really like to use Serrano or Bayonne Ham. Since the recipe only uses 4 ounces, it normally wouldn't break the bank.....If I can't find those, then a good Proscuitto works well – I've even used the Boars Head Black Forest Ham in a pinch.…

Christmas is the time we get a lot of treats that for some reason, we don't make during the rest of the year. I was at a couple of events (and visiting the store) where a certain kitchen store that also sells a lot of seasonal food items was sampling their peppermint bark. I thought it was very good until I saw the price - $26.95 for one pound! You've got to be kidding me! That's crazy.... It's only 3 or 4 ingredients, so how hard can it be? Well....it turns out not that hard, but as usual, the quality of the ingredients is critical. So I set off to make some peppermint bark! I decided to be a little different and put my white chocolate on the bottom rather than on the top like the unnamed kitchen store does. As I was in the store looking for the ingredients, I got some “White Baking Chips” from one of my normally favorite brands – Ghirardelli. I was not careful and did not really notice that they were very careful about not saying White CHOCOLATE Baking Chips and here I learned my first lesson. When trying to melt those chips over…