New recipes, I LOVE new recipes! Scones!

This past week has been a busy one, well all my weeks are busy (I like them that way).  On Saturday I hosted a Pampered Chef show at our home, and of course the weather had to do a short warm up and makes some mud, but it was a beautiful day in the end.  I had a great group of ladies come over and we tried two new recipes.

I LOVE new recipes...  

I LOVE finding recipes that I can change too.  I don't look at a recipe as a definite set of rules to follow, I color outside the lines and mix it up.  Recipes are more for a general idea of what spices and amounts work together, but add your own. Go where the flour takes you lol.   I do the same thing with sewing, grab some scraps and see what they inspire.  Makes me sound a lot more relaxed than I really am..  I do like a routine and schedule, I like things in order and done right, but I also see the benefits of creativity.

So I thought I would share the current craze at our house SCONES!!!  I first seen some at a local coffee and sandwich shop and they gave me a free one, can't remember what the reason was, but it was good.  It was some sort of cheese scone.  I filed that away in my brain to try some day.  Than while I was getting acquainted with our Direct TV I seen a few cooking shows, one of those was The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond, I have followed her on facebook for a while but hadn't watched her show yet.  Well good ole facebook to the rescue!  She said there was a marathon of her shows...and one was about making some yummy mouthwatering Vanilla Scones.  So we watched her and than tried them... and so it began....

So far we have made Ree Drummonds vanilla ones that were REALLY sweet (I mis-read the sugar amount, than the dog ate them :-(... 

We than tried the Pampered Chef recipe which works really easy with the stones..  Their Fruit N' Oat Scone recipe is SO fast and easy and it takes no eggs (which happens to be a huge plus for me)..  I have made them with Raisins, with PB chips, and today with craisins and choc chips.  I also used the icing idea from the Vanilla scones and made an icing with some home made apple Jelly..  YUM

I than searched online some more and came up with a base recipe that you can add to and change for different flavors. 

SOOO all that blabbering to get to this!!!  A base recipe for Scones

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup rolled oats

OR

3 c of all-purpose flour

1/4 cup packed brown sugar 

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt  (if you use unsalted butter, use 1t salt instead)

1/2 cup cold butter or margarine, cut into thin slices

1/2 cup milk

Here are the flavor tricks: 

1/2 cup diced mixed dried fruit (raisins, baking chips, nuts etc)

Sprinkle with a Cinn/Sugar mix before putting in the oven

Or

Cheddar Bacon Scones:

add 4 slices of cooked and chopped bacon

1 c shredded cheddar

1/2 c sliced green onion

1/2 t pepper

up your milk a bit if it is dry with all the cheese.  

Some recipes call for heavy cream, many of them seem to use about twice as much heavy cream as they would milk, OR 1/2 c sour cream plus 1 egg instead of milk.

BAKING:

Preheat oven to 400°F. Combine the dry ingredients.  Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in your fruit, bacon, cheese or whatever your adding.  Add milk; mix just until dry ingredients are moistened.

If you are using a large enough bowl you can knead gently in the bowl or if you need to put it onto a lightly floured surface and gently knead it about 10 times. Dust a little flour on your pan (A large round stone works well, but a square would work as well)..  Put the dough onto the pan and using your hands gently press it flat into about a 7" circle or square.  Using a rolling pin finish rolling it till it is about 1/2" thick.  Dust the top with flour if needed.  Using a pizza cutter, cut them into wedges or squares and carefully separate with a spatula.
Bake 15-17 minutes or until golden brown.

Top with a drizzle of icing or eat as is!

Here is the link to the Pampered Chef recipe