6 Lemon Scones

Yesterday I told you about making cranberry-pomegranate sauce to go with my fried brie- but after I snarfed up enjoyed the brie in a ladylike fashion, I had a good amount of the sauce leftover. Clearly I needed to make something else worthy of it!
Lemon and cranberry is one of my favorite flavor combinations, and lemon scones popped into mind. (See? My always-have-lemons policy pays off!) I've never made scones before, so I pulled out several of my British cookbooks and paged through to the scone recipes. I found fruit scones, cream scones, brown scones... but none that suggested exactly how to balance the recipe with the addition of lemon juice.
(I modify and change around recipes frequently, but when I'm tackling a new product I like to have a few recipes to compare and to see what's indispensable to the dough, and adding lemon juice can alter a lot in a recipe. It not only increases the moisture content, but turns any milk or cream to buttermilk or sour cream.)
I didn't want cream scones, but that set me on the path to buttermilk scones, so I hit Google. I found this recipe for lemon scones on Farmgirl Fare, and it was exactly the recipe I was seeking! Once again, I'll tell you my modifications, but out of respect to Farmgirl I'm gonna ask you to click over for the full recipe.

I didn't have Meyer lemons but I did have some nice big ones I picked up at Whole Foods. One thing I'll suggest if you're wanting to keep lemons on hand but not immediately use them- pick the firmest ones you find with very bright peels- those will last longer than soft ones. Keep them in the crisper of your fridge, but don't touch courgettes (zucchini), broccoli, or other leafy greens to them- they tend to soften the vegetables faster. I'm not entirely sure why, but I assume it is the citric acid. I just make sure my lemons are only next to other fruit or carrots (but remember, carrots are best stored fresh out of the ground with the dirt on them, wrapped in a brown paper bag in a dark, cool place- only put them in the fridge if they've been washed).  If your lemons are starting to soften before you've used them, just make some fresh lemonade! That's always a good plan to me!

Anyway, back to the recipe.

I zested way more than 2 tsp- probably closer to 1/3 cup, but I love lemon flavor.

The dry mixture on the left, no changes other than the increased amount of zest. The wet mixture on the right, and here we go: I juiced two lemons and didn't measure it- but it looked to be just over 1/2 cup. I used skim milk, because that's what I drink (I have high cholesterol). I also used 3 egg whites instead of 2 whole eggs, once again because of my high cholesterol. I rarely use egg yolks, and have developed a fairly good substitution for whites-to-whole in recipes- 1.5:1 for large eggs (there are accepted weights you can measure out if you're more particular about following recipes, though). If I'm making cookies that I want to stay soft I do 2:1; the extra white makes all the difference in soft 3-day old cookies!  Anyway- the plain yogurt I have on hand is Greek and I wasn't sure if that'd be too thick, so I used a Stonyfield french vanilla yogurt.  Cut the butter into the dry mixture like you're making pastry dough, then fold in the wet mixture as described by Farmgirl.

Top row: patting out the dough; the cut scones
Bottom row: after the egg wash, my impatient peek in the oven

I knew I wanted to cut circle scones rather than wedge-shaped ones, so I patted out my dough to be 1" thick as described, but then went to my cookie cutter drawer. I couldn't find my biscuit (American version) cutter easily and I didn't want to sort through things with my floury hands, but I did find a large pumpkin cutter so I used it instead. That's why my scones have little tails :)  Once again my egg-wash only had egg whites and skim milk.

Scones! YUM!

This was my leftover dough after I'd cut out enough pumpkins to fill my baking sheet. I balled it up and set it in the egg wash, then rolled it around and popped in on a little tray in the toaster oven, also at 400ºF. I ate it first, and the crispy edge all over it was absolutely amazing. I'm tempted to do this to all of them next time!

The regular scones were very delicious on their own- I have no complaints! I got twelve total out of the recipe, and just polished off the last three today. (Yes, I'm a piggy. It's why I started baking my own goods.)

And as for being a good match for the cranberry-pomegranate sauce? PERFECT! A dab of clotted cream would have added to the flavor, but I didn't want to whip that up as well since I knew I wouldn't want the amount that the cream I have would make, and you have to use the whole carton in 5 days.  I'm saving that for Eton mess, winter edition!

I've got just a bit of the cranberry-pomegranate sauce left now, and am debating just using it on regular toast or making an angel food cake... I generally err on the side of angel food cake, though!
Any other ideas for me? What's your favorite flavor combination? (Other than lemon-cranberry, I can't resist chocolate-hazelnut!)

Note: I got the results on Sloan's lumps' histopaths yesterday- all three were benign!! Now we just have to make it through her staple removal and we'll all have a celebration at an off-leash nature park!