Recipe Source: The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion: The All-Purpose Baking Book. The Countryman Press, Woodstock, 2003 p. 119 - 20.
This book, which I received as a gift from my Aunt Chris, may be one of the most useful gifts anyone has ever given me. I refer to it constantly, even when I don't wind up using a King Arthur recipe. I was kind of disappointed that our recent leaf-peeping trip to Vermont didn't take us to King Arthur headquarters (the trip was in all other respects wonderful). Anyway, I recently took a trip to a sporting event with my husband and some other athletes. The trip required us to leave at 5:00 AM, a time at which I'm usually just crawling into bed. I was unlikely to be at all hospitable at that hour, so I wanted to show my affection for my companions in a less verbal way: by feeding them. We had picked up some delicious maple syrup while we were in Vermont - I think everyone does - and I decided to showcase that with this recipe.
I did make some changes. I had to use soy milk for the milk. We generally only stock soy milk. My husband puts milk in his coffee, which is downright blasphemous but we'll forgive him. I never ever drink the stuff. We used to buy real milk, but my husband's travel schedule is so unpredictable and decent milk has such a short shelf life I wound up throwing most of it away every week. Soy milk keeps longer than dairy milk, so that's what we use. I had actually bought real milk for another purpose, but... well... it went bad. So I used soy milk instead. Anyway. I skipped the optional maple flavoring. I also skipped the walnuts. The walnuts were supposed to be toasted. The oven was occupied. The oven had been occupied for some time, it was going to continue to be occupied, and I didn't feel like messing around with stovetop toasting. The scones were a big hit, both with our friends and with the people at the event that I shared the scones with.
Maple Scones (makes 16 scones; approx. $0.45/ea.)
3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup vegetable shortening
1 cup soy milk
1/2 cup maple syrup, plus more if needed
Equipment:
- 2 mixing bowls
- 2 baking sheets
- Pastry cutter
- Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.
- In one mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt.
- Cut in the shortening with the pastry cutter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
- In a separate bowl, combine the milk and 1/3 cup of the maple syrup.
- Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until you've formed a very soft dough.
- Flour your work surface generously - they aren't kidding about this - and scrape the dough out of the mixing bowl onto the surface.
- Divide the dough in half.
- Gently pat 1/2 of the dough into a 7" circle about 7/8" thick.
- Transfer the circle to a lightly greased cookie sheet. A giant spatula is helpful here.
- Repeat with the remaining half of the dough, but transfer to the separate pan.
- Using a sharp knife or pizza wheel, divide each dough circle into eighths.
- Carefully separate the wedges so they're almost touching in the center, but not wuite.
- Pierce the tops of the scones with the tines of a fork and brush with some of the remaining maple syrup.
- Bake 15 - 18 minutes or untl golden brown.
- Immediately remove from the oven and brush with the remaining maple syrup. Use more if necessary, but be generous with the syrup.
- Let cool and serve either warm or at room temperature.
