Valentine Breakfast: Scones

I'm bringing some extra food crafts this weekend in honor of Valentine's Day. I'll start off with this easy scone recipe. It makes some super yummy, tender scones and you can substitute in berries, dried fruits and more to make any flavor you like. Also, while a lot of scone recipes call for cutting in cold butter, these use melted butter and make a spoonable batter. Easy for you, yummy for the ones you love :)

To make these super yummy scones you will need:

1 1/2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon (optional--I really love cinnamon with chocolate)
1 pinch salt
1 cup chocolate chips (I used milk chocolate, you can use any chocolate fruit etc you like)
1 Tablespoon butter, melted
1 cup heavy cream

extra cinnamon and sugar to top (optional)


Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a bowl, mix together your flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Pour in chocolate chips and toss around to coat them with the flour mixture (this will help keep them suspended in your scones).

Make a small well in the middle of your flour and pour in your cream and melted butter. Stir until all ingredients come together, batter will resemble a very thick pancake batter.

Using a large dough scoop or spoon, scoop scones onto baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Sprinkle tops with cinnamon sugar mixture if desired. Bake in 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes, or until slightly golden on top. Makes 10-12 scones.

Enjoy!

Friday Food Craft: Phenomenal Pie Crust

It's Friday again already, and I am back with another yummy food craft! I'm still on a kick for the cold weather comfort recipes (it was extra cold and rainy again here last night) so I thought I would share with you my husband's recipe for a super flaky pie crust that can be used with both sweet and savory pies! That's right you can use it to cover pot pies and turn around to use the scraps for apple turnovers for dessert! It's also pretty easy!

You will need:

2 cups flour
1 large pinch of salt
1 1/3 cups cold unsalted butter, cut into about Tablespoon size pieces
about 2/3 cups water (we usually need slightly less than 2/3 cup before the dough comes together)

food processor


In your food processor, pulse together your flour salt and butter until you have pretty uniform "pebbles" of butter, about pea sized. Then, add your water at a slow drizzle while the processor is on a low speed, stop once your dough has just come together away from the sides of your food processor.

Form into a disc and refrigerate for 30 minutes before rolling out, you will still have fairly large chunks of butter mixed throughout. This is a GREAT thing as it will result in yummy, flaky layers almost like puff pastry. YUM!

After 30 minutes remove from refrigerator and place onto a floured surface to roll. You will want to roll it to 1/8"-1/4 " thick. Then use it for the application of your choice: top your favorite stew or casserole for a yummy pot pie, cut up some fruit and make a fruit pie (I generally go for apples mmmmm), make some turnovers, put some lemon curd between two layers for lemony pop tart treats, cut circle from your dough-add filling and fold to make little hand pies!- the possibilities are limitless.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes (for a whole pie) until the crust is golden brown. For smaller applications I would check after about 30 minutes to see if it is done.


*To make the apple turnovers I have pictured above I used about 1/3 of the above dough recipe (leftovers from dinner) along with 2 apples, some cinnamon, a tablespoon of sugar and an extra dot of butter each (I would also recommend using a fork to close your turnovers as I did not so mine came apart a bit, I was in a hurry for flaky apple goodness!).

Friday Food Craft: Gumdrops

This is an extra sweet and sugar filled food craft! I was inspired by a post about a month ago on Bakerella and really wanted to try my hand at making my own gumdrops. Since I wasn't making them for a crowd and didn't want to be too tempted, I halved the recipe on her site. Also, I decided to spice it up by using ice cube trays from IKEA to mold my gum drops into fancy, single piece candies rather than cut all of mine up. I took her advice and sprayed my ice cub trays with cooking spray. I recommend this, these guys are sticky!

I think the added cute factor of having shaped gumdrops is really nice as well, and now is a great time to check out clearance ice cube trays (if you can find the silicone ones, i think they'd be easier to pop your gumdrops out of, but mine worked just fine as well and were only 2 dollars each). Also, if you want smaller gumdrops you don't need to fill each ice cube slot all the way, you will still get the basic shape without the volume.

On to the recipe! (Mine filled 3 ice cube trays from IKEA)

2 Tablespoons (about 3 packets) of unflavored gelatin
1/2 cup cold water
3/4 cup boiling water
2 cups sugar

1/4 teaspoon flavored extract per flavor (I made 3 flavors)
Food coloring to achieve desired color (about 1-3 drops per flavor)

Extra sugar for coating

Start by dissolving your gelatin in 1/2 cup cold water. Allow to set for about 5 minutes, while boiling some water. Add 3/4 cup boiling water, 2 cups sugar and stir until dissolved.

In a large pot (this stuff bubbles up quite a bit) bring to a slow boil and allow to cook for 20-25 minutes while stirring constantly. You may want to enlist the help of someone as this is a lot of stirring and you don't want your sugar to burn.

Separate your mixture into 3 containers, add your flavoring and coloring and refrigerate to set. I used a Pyrex measuring glass to mix mine in and then poured into my ice cube trays. If you use a square pan or baking dish and then cut your gumdrops once they have set, you can mix your colors and flavors right in the pan.

Refrigerate overnight. Remove from trays (or baking dish--then cut into desired size pieces). Cover with sugar, and now the hard part: allow these to set up for 2 days! That was torture, but they are sure tasty.

I was a little heavy handed with the red food coloring in my orange flavored gumdrops, but they still taste orangey and delicious. I also made strawberry flavored. There are quite a large variety of flavor extracts available now, so I recommend trying whatever you like, or maybe be adventurous and get an extract you have never tried before.

Enjoy!