Packout Scones

A few people have requested the recipe for the scones that were at the greenhouse during packout last Saturday. They weren't made with any of the produce from the farm this time, although they are also tasty with a dollop of pear butter made from the pears from the Schenk's yard. Here's the recipe.

SCONES

2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick (1/2 cup) cold butter (or margarine)
2/3 cup buttermilk (or put a tablespoon of lemon juice in measuring cup and then add milk to 2/3 cup)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
1 tablespoon milk
dried fruit, nuts, or jam (optional)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. It's quicker to mix the dough in a food processor, but you can cut in the butter with the dry ingredients by hand with two knives--that's the first step, mix together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and butter (cut into smaller pieces) until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add the vanilla to the buttermilk and then add all the liquid slowly to flour mixture until it forms a stiff dough (you might not need all of the liquid). At this point, mix in dried fruit or nuts if you want, then turn out dough on floured surface and form a round about 8" in diameter and an inch or more thick. (For more smaller scones, make two rounds, smaller in diameter but still about an inch thick, and cut each one ito six wedges.) Cut into eight wedges, and arrange them on a double cookie sheet lined with wax paper (that is, put one cookie sheet inside another and put wax paper on the top cookie sheet; this keeps the bottoms from burning while the tops brown). Mix the egg and milk together and brush the tops of the scones with the egg mixture. If you haven't put dried fruit or nuts in the dough, at this point you can make an indentation with the back of a spoon in the wide part of each wedge and then put a teaspoon of preserves, jam, or apple butter in the indentation. Then bake for 20 minutes, cool, and eat.