Scon? or Scown? Why Quibble . . . Just eat!

In 1864 the manageress of a bakery had the inspired idea of opening a room at the back of her store as a public tea-room. This proved so successful that several other companies began to do the same, resulting in 'tea shops' opening all over London and other main towns. These popular establishments drew customers of all ages and classes. They served a variety of hot and cold, sweet and savoury foods, alongside cups and pots of tea.



One of the most popular destinations for a traveller in the UK today, is to go have a "Cream Tea" in one of the many tea rooms that dot the landscape in most villages and towns over here. There you will be served a nice pot of hot tea along with a plate of scones, still warm from the oven, along with a bowl of strawberry preserves and a nice pot of clotted cream. This combination is heaven on earth to be sure, and if you are really lucky you will be served by a girl dressed in the the lovely Victorian or Edwardian tradition complete with black dress, white pinny and white starched lace cap!



Welcome to this week's Tuesday's With Dorie, the weekly baking group of "Baking-ista's" that get their "bake-on" by baking together one recipe a week from Dorie Greenspan's lovely book, Baking, from my home to yours. This week Karina of The Floured Apron has chosen…
Apple Cheddar Scones which can be found on page 32 of the book. You can also get the recipe by checking out Karina's page. (Right now you can get your own copy of the book on Amazon for as little as $5.99, a worthy investment I can assure you!)



I was really excited when I read the choice for this week. Thanks so much Karina for choosing this! If there's one thing that Todd loves, it's a good scone!!! (How do YOU pronounce that word anyways? Is it Scon or Scown???)

Once I had read the recipe though I knew I would have a problem right off the bat. I have had a really hard time finding dried apple over here in England. It's not entirely impossible if one searches hard enough, but with a work week that in this past week was overloaded with activity I knew that I would not have a lot of time to go out searching for much of anything. In fact, I would be lucky if I managed to get the challenge baked, which was another reason I was superdy duperdy glad it was not a complicated or lengthy challenge to bake!

I put my thinking cap on and came up with what was, in my opinion, a very deliciously suitable substitution for the apple. I decided to use a dried tropical fruit mixture which contains lovely dried pieces of mango, papaya, melon and pineapple. Ohh, this idea really got my taste buds tingling and my brain racing for I decided to also add some chopped macadamia nuts to the mix as well as use pineapple juice instead of the apple. I couldn't think of a cheese that would go really well and so thought about leaving cheese out altogether. After reading the recipe I realized that the cheese was only folded into the batter at the end before baking so that leaving it out would not alter the batter any at all and so that's what I did . . . I left out the cheese.

This scone batter turned out really wet. There was no discernible way that I could see myself happily patting it out and then cutting it into anything so I opted to make drop scones. I was also a little worried about them sticking and so I buttered my baking sheet and then lightly floured it before dropping the batter on in huge spoonful's.



Wow, they came out of the oven looking beautiful . . . nicely puffed little mounds of what looked to be deliciously crumbly and tasty scones!! I split one open and inside were lovely bits of the dried fruit sparkling up at me like little coloured jewels of tastiness.



Lightly buttered, this was a true taste delight to me. They had a lovely texture, with just a hint of crunch from the cornmeal. Each mouthful was bursting with the lovely flavours of tropical fruit and deliciously crunchy macadamia nuts!

Todd had his split, buttered and spread with some tasty orange marmalade and he really enjoyed it to be sure!



All in all this was a lovely recipe that I found to be very easy to adapt to other flavours and combinations. I think I will try it again sometime with perhaps some lovely dried pear and a bit of Stilton, and yes . . . chopped walnuts would be the perfect addition in that combination as well! (A totally English combination!)

Make sure you hop on over to the blog roll and check out everyone else's version of this week's recipe. Tell them I sent you! In the meantime I am off to heat one up for my breakfast . . . after all I reckon Scones are not just for tea time . . . breakfast is the perfect time to eat one . . . as is elevenses . . . oh and don't forget that afternoon coffee break! Next week, Amy of South in Your Mouth has selected . . . Double Crusted Blueberry Pie on pages 361-363 . . . mmmmm . . . I love blueberries and I love pie, what a tasty recipe to look forward to!

(PS-I have a dinner party to cook for tonight so I am not sure how many of your pages I will be able to get to today, but rest assured I will try to visit as many of them that I can in the coming week. There's a ton of us now, so that in and of itself presents quite a challenge!)