Autumn Tease

Autum is my favorite season and one of the things I miss most about living back East.  Leaves changing, that first true chill in the air, a chunky sweater, and the beginning of the baking season that runs through the holidays. In Los Angeles, Fall seems to kick off more times than not by waves of 90 degree plus days.  Not the best way to kick off the season.  We had a reprieve from the heatwave, so I took advantage of the cooler temps and turned on the oven to bake these scones.  Apples scream Autumn and the scones did not disappoint, especially warm out of the oven with butter.

Apple Cinnamon Scones

Adapted from the 'Simple Scones Recipe' from King Arthur Flour
Makes 10-12

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 cup (8 tablespoons) cold butter
2 cups minced apples (I used Honeycrisps)

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon cinnamon
2 large eggs
1/ 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup milk
2 tablespoons heavy cream, for brushing scones, optional

cinnamon sugar, optional

Preheat oven 375 degrees.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, set aside.  After mincing apples, put in a small bowl and sprinkle with lemon juice.  Add cinnamon and stir to coat apple bits thoroughly.  

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt. Cut in  butter until the mixture is crumbly. Mix in apples. Whisk eggs, extract, and milk together in large measuring cup or small bowl.  Gradually add the liquid mixture to the dry, mixing thoroughly until there's enough liquid to incorporate all the dry ingredients. 

Using your hands or a tablespoon, drop mixture onto cookie sheet.  Dust hands with extra flour to keep mixture from sticking to hands.  I made mine about 2 1/2 to 3 inches wide, about an inch and a half high.  Place about an inch and a half apart on baking sheet.  

Brush tops of scones with heavy cream and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.  Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until bottoms are lightly browned.  Remove from oven and let sit for about 5 minutes.  Serve with butter while still warm.

Did You Feel It?

There was a shift in the seasons recently.  That time of year when all things Summer--beach days, shorts, and backyard barbecues--is quietly packed up and set aside for the next 365 days.  You may have spied it in store aisles--heralded by the dominant color scheme of oranges, yellows, and deep umbers.  Yes...you know what I'm talking about...Pumpkin Spice Season.

Oh...you thought I was going to talk about Autumn?  Or even Back to School?  Nah...they seem to have fallen to the wayside over the past couple of years.  The shift of seasons is measured by the launch of the Pumpkin Spice Latte at Starbucks.  And much like the push for Christmas seems to be earlier every year, Pumpkin Spice season seemed to arrive earlier too.  Didn't it happen before Labor Day?  In the still sweltering days of August?

Pumpkin Spice lattes, pumpkin spice cream oreos, pumpkin spice flavored coffee, pumpkin spice cream filled Twinkies, even pumpkin spice sparkling juice.  If you have a Trader Joe's in the neighborhood and receive their Fearless Flyer ad, you may have noticed in the latest edition that the first page featured pumpkin tortilla chips, and deeper within the issue there were SIX additional pages of pumpkin-this or pumpkin spice-that flavored foods.

It's pumpkin overload.  Now...don't get me wrong.  I'm not anti-pumpkin.  I will occasionally enjoy a slice of pumpkin pie.  I think pumpkin biscotti are pretty darn fabulous, and pumpkin gnocchi with butter and sage has a place in my recipe collection.  But the pumpkin spice everything--when is too much, too much?

Before we attempt to answer that question, let me sneak in a recipe for pumpkin scones.  Yes, there is spice in it.  To take it up another notch...there's even chocolate.  Enjoy the pumpkin for a few more weeks, because before you know it, Gingerbread and Peppermint seasons will soon be here.


Dark Chocolate Chunk Pumpkin Scones
Makes 14-16 3 inch scones

2 1/2 cups flour
3 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
6 tbsp butter, chilled, in small cubes
1/3 cup milk or cream
2 eggs
1/2 cup 100% pure pumpkin
1/3 cup chopped dark chocolate, preferably 64% cocoa

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.  Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.  In a large bowl, whisk all dry ingredients together and set aside.  In a small bowl, beat the milk and eggs.  Add the cubed butter to the dry ingredients, mix in with either two forks or a pastry cutter until you have a pebbly texture.  Mix in the eggs and milk.   Add pumpkin and chocolate pieces, mixing until well combined.  Scoop heaping teaspoons full onto cookie sheet, spacing about 2 inches apart.  Bake for 14-16 minutes, or until bottoms are golden.  Transfer to a cooling rack.  

The glaze on the scones below is a quick melt of roughly a tablespoon of butter and 4-6 small squares of chocolate (an inch by half inch or so).  Melt butter over low heat, add chocolate, turn off heat, and stir until chocolate pieces melt.  Drizzle over scones.  The chocolate glaze will harden slightly.  These are also pretty awesome without the glaze.

Zesty!

How great would it be if there were acres of land still covered in citrus groves like in vintage photos of Southern California?  Where there is now sprawl there used to be rows and rows of orange or lemon trees.  If  you look around the neighbourhoods of Los Angeles, you'll spot citrus trees scattered about.  Either left over from decades ago or planted when new neighbourhoods were built, they're around.  Make friends with your neighbours.  When those trees are laden with fruit, ask nicely, and you may get a bushel.

Let me tell you how happy I am to know that I have a co-worker with a Meyer lemon tree in his yard.  I've had not one, but two days where I've gone into work and received bags of lemons to bring home.   Lemon curd has been made and I sit here looking at a bowl overflowing with lemons which will be juiced and zested, with some frozen for later use and most likely, another round of curd made.

In my world, there is no such thing as too much citrus, so after I made the Meyer lemon curd, I thought there was nothing better to put that curd on than citrus-laced scones.  Beyond lemon scones, I made them a triple threat scone.  Filled with a combination of Meyer lemon, Cara Cara orange, and lime, these scones are just perfumed enough to give you a whiff of orange before you bite into one, and a sweet balance of the three at the first bite.

I call them Citrus Bomb Scones. 

Citrus Bomb Scones
Makes about 12 scones

2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
3 tablespoons sugar
6 tablespoons butter, cold, cut into cubes
3 oz evaporated milk
2 eggs
1 teaspoon each zest of Meyer lemon, Cara Cara orange, and lime
1 teaspoon each juice of Meyer lemon, Cara Cara orange, and lime

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Sift dry ingredients together.  Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.  In a separate small bowl, combine eggs and milk and mix.  Add to flour mixture and bring together loosely.  Mix zests of citrus together and add to batter, along with juice.  Mix until a loose dough forms, then turn out onto a floured board.  Roll out dough to roughly 1/2 inch thick and cut into squares or use a biscuit cutter to form scones.  Brush lightly with a little milk and if you like, sprinkle with coarse sugar.  Bake on a parchment lined sheet for 16-20 minutes or until bottoms are golden brown.  

A Lemon in Winter

Winter in Los Angeles does not usually bring to mind freezing temperatures like we had a week or so ago (and still having, though a tad warmer).  Winter does bring to mind a market flowing with citrus...whether little satsumas, bright, big Navel oranges, blushing grapefruits, or sunny lemons.  Even better than your typical lemon is the Meyer lemon.  A little rounder than a true lemon, a Meyer is thought to be a hybrid between a lemon and orange.  The juice is sweeter and the skin smoother and much thinner.

I stopped at the grocer's the other night and right past the bananas, there they were, quietly calling out to me.  The store had them packaged in groups of four, but in looking through the stack, I found a package of two.  Perfect.

I've been slowly returning to my usual self in the kitchen.  Doing more cooking, having more for dinner than a sandwich, and thinking about baking, which I hadn't done since the holidays.  Today was a day off from work and by late this morning, I had those Meyers zested and juiced, though I was still debating what to do with them.  I made fresh ricotta this morning and thought about a Meyer lemon and ricotta cake, or maybe Meyer lemon cupcakes with a simple glaze...but truthfully...both options were more work than I wanted to do.  So I fell back on my tried and true, easy to make, and quick to bake...scones.

They are just what I wanted.  Not too sweet with the delicate taste of Meyer lemons.  Hot out of the oven with a dab of butter...it was perfection.

Meyer Lemon Scones
Makes about a dozen 2-inch scones

2 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
3 tbsp sugar
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
6 tbsp butter, cut in pieces
4 tbsp Meyer lemon juice
2 teaspoons Meyer lemon zest
2 tbsp milk or water
Sugar for sprinkling (optional)

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.  In a bowl, sift flour and baking powder.  Add remaining ingredients and with a pastry cutter or fork, mix well.  Turn dough out onto a floured board, rolling out until dough is about half an inch thick and cut scones with a biscuit or cookie cutter.  Alternately, you can make 2-inch rounds with your hands.  The dough will be soft and fairly sticky, so dust your hands with a decent amount of flour.  

If you like, brush the scones with milk and sprinkle with sugar before baking.  I left my plain.

Bake for 16-20 minutes, depending on size.  Remove from oven and allow to cool on cooling rack.  

It's Been Some Week...

...or Midnight Baking Session #834.  I couldn't decide which to name this post.  Pick whichever strikes your fancy at the moment.  Neither will be wrong.  So, it's been a busy week, a strange week, a sad week, a happy week.  Just think...the week isn't even over yet.


I don't talk about the Day Job too often.  I don't think this is particularly the correct platform.  I've typically kept a pretty obvious boundary between my work-life and the rest of my life.  Here's the 2-minute version of what's been going on:  On April 25th, I found out that the corporate office of the company I work for decided that our store would be closing.  Despite being the Number 1 store in the company for fiscal 2011, according to a report that measured certain metrics, we weren't profitable enough in the space we were in.  It was totally unexpected.  In fact, I spent much of the past two months being either pissed off and angry or resigned (I get that it's a numbers game, but it still sucks).  As the store slowly emptied out over the past couple of weeks, it started to sink in how sad it made me, despite the fact that I took great joy in taking down another wall or moving fixtures from one shop to another to condense down.  I found myself humming "Another One Bites the Dust" every time I walked back to the stockroom with another handful of fixturing.


Well, the end finally came.  Our last day of business was this past Sunday and we were done, final checks in hand (those of us who were left), keys turned over to the construction team (they really should be called the de-construction team) this past Tuesday.  And I finally cried.  I had been holding it in over the past week, covering it up with Queen.  I let it sink in that the people I've worked with over the past 2 years weren't just co-workers, but friends.  They were joyful guinea pigs for baking experiments and went along with potluck meeting ideas...even the ones who claimed not to cook...I will not forget Pam's stuffed mushrooms.


Let me share a few more thoughts.  It was strange waking up Wednesday morning.  There's a certain mindset when you wake up on your day off, it's another mindset when you think, "I've nowhere to go to tomorrow."  I am not happy to be out of a job...a girl's gotta pay the rent.  But I am beginning to be a believer in the 'things happen for a reason' camp.  I've had more than a few people tell me it's time to push the food business forward.  It's time to follow the passion.  And I absolutely believe that to be true.  I also decided to pursue something else I've been wanting to do for a while.  Volunteer at a museum.  I met with the events manager at the Fowler Museum on UCLA's campus this afternoon and I am thrilled to pieces to report that I have orientation and my first day as part of the visitor services group next Friday.  


:::Deep breath:::  Okay...back to business.  As a last hurrah and 'thank you' for working with a great group of women, I baked treats...not just once, but twice.  And with another Girls' Night on Wednesday, I baked a third time.  Tomorrow may bring something else, as I bought cherries and have clafoutis on the brain.  Though this time around, I won't have the usual group to share it with.  


Cherry Almond Shortbread
(Adapted from the Classic Shortbread recipe in Martha Stewart's Cookies)


2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoon coarse salt
1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks), room temperature
3/4 cup confectioners' sugar
1 cup chopped cherries (I used fresh Bing cherries, you could substitute dried)
1/2 cup sliced almonds, toasted
1 teaspoon almond extract


Pre-heat oven to 300 degrees. Grease and line an 8 x 8 square baking pan with parchment.  Toast the almond slices either atop the stove in a skillet or in the oven for a couple of minutes.  In a bowl, sift together the flour and salt.  In another bowl, cream the butter and sugar until fluffy.  Add extract and mix.  Alternately add the flour, cherries, and almonds to the creamed butter.  Using a wooden spoon, mix all ingredients until well-combined.  Press mixture into the baking pan, spreading into the corners.  Flatten and cover with plastic wrap.  Refrigerate for about 20 minutes.  After chilling dough, transfer to oven and bake until golden brown around edges, about an hour.  Let cool in pan for 15 minutes before transferring to wire rack to finish cooling.  You may need to use a knife edge to loosen shortbread from pan.

Cherry Almond Shortbread for Girls' Night

Red Velvet for the best team I could have!

Raspberry Scones