— Eating on the Floor, No. 2 —
What wine goes with scones?
It doesn’t matter in any case, all I’ve got is the last of something cheap and white. But it’s French. And you’re welcome to half of what’s left in the bottle.
I would make scones in the morning, but I’ve found that nobody in the house will eat more than a single crispy sweet corner so I’ve saved the task for the evening, for the quiet, and mostly because I knew you would be here.
Tonight we can hear the wind howling down the chimney.
Oh Lord, you should have been here that night the other week, when I was trying to explain the idea of chimney sweeps to Faye and somehow wandered into Victorian child labor issues and all those little boys with testicular cancer shimmying up and down the old chimneys. I mean, why did they have to be nude?! I was so far off the deep end. And she was looking at me with that look. The one that said she was ready to crawl right up through the flue.
Sometimes I wonder if I would know, if I weren’t a very good mother.
–EB
Read more from Eating on the Floor…
CHERRY ALMOND SCONES, for eating at night, or in the morning. There’s really no wrong time to eat a scone.
These scones are incredibly easy. They are light and delicate, and excellent with coffee. I like mine with cherries and nuts, but they are equally tasty plain. Or try them with a 1/2 cup of dried cranberries and the zest of an orange.
Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup almonds, chopped
1/3 cup dried sweetened sour cherries
1 1/3 cup of heavy whipping cream
2 tablespoons butter, melted
—— optional
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
Preheat the oven to 400°F.
Stir together the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar in a large bowl. Add the almonds and the dried cherries, incorporating them into the dry ingredients.
Stir in the cream and mix the dough until it just starts to come together. Then turn your dough out onto a floured surface and knead briefly; just enough to bring the dough completely together. Pat or roll your dough into an 8″ circle.
Brush the dough with the melted butter, and if you like, sprinkle with the extra sugar.
Cut the circle into 8 wedges, and place the wedges 1″ apart on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake 17 minutes, or until tops are golden brown.
* A version of this recipe appears in my very favorite, go-to cookbook, The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters. I received this cookbook as a Christmas gift from my mother—a great lover of all manner of cookbooks—probably thirteen-ish years ago and it pretty much taught me to cook, well.
E. BOOCKMEIER 