Welcome to Passionate Cooks Months at AReCafe! Please welcome Sara Daniel to the Cafe.
Download Passionate Cooks today for this and other great recipes by today’s hottest authors.
Usually when it comes to cooking and baking, I prefer to do the bare minimum to keep my family from starving. But that all changed when I wrote Mr. Forever. My heroine Olivia makes scones as the specialty of her inn, and I’ve been obsessing about scones ever since.
See, my heroine has been called a “scone sorceress” and “scone goddess.” She’s gotten instant marriage proposals because of her amazing scones. Did I mention she makes plain scones along with two flavors of the day every day? All of this was fabulous in my imaginary writing world until I wanted to connect with my inner goddess and make scones delicious enough that men would take a bite and instantly fall in love. Who wouldn’t, right?
My journey started off on an inspiring note. The drive-thru man at my local coffee shop promised me his pumpkin spice scones were so good they would change my life. Of course, I jumped on that offer. Story research and a new improved life—talk about getting the most out of my four-dollar investment! I took notes at my desk while I ate it. It was good, but I have to admit my life seemed pretty much the same routine of laundry, dishes, groceries, etc.
I was ready to take the next step—making my own scones. At this point I also had some very brown bananas on my counter in desperate need of being turned into banana bread. As I looked up scone recipes, I discovered one for banana scones. Perfect.
Alas, the banana scones were…not perfect. The dough was a sticky, gooey mass. Cutting it into triangle wedges was a disaster. The oddly shaped lumps were edible when they were warm straight from the oven, but they were dry and heavy. Basically, I had managed to bake really bad banana bread. This was not how I envisioned my scone sorceress’s amazing creation would taste, at all.
A few days later I went to a children’s tea party, where the girls sipped hot peppermint tea and nibbled store-bought blueberry scones. These scones were sweet. They weren’t as good as the pumpkin spice scone I’d started my adventure with, but were certainly better than the banana disaster.
I worked up my nerve to try one more recipe. I found one for almond-poppyseed scones. This time the dough shaped nicely, just like the instructions promised, and came out of the oven looking beautiful. I was excited. I tried one, and they were good but not quite as sweet as I hoped. I checked the recipe again. I’d forgotten the sugar! How could I have forgotten such a simple thing? So, I coated them in powdered sugar to make up for it, and they were pretty darn good. But still not perfect.
So, I made another batch—remembering the sugar (duh!) AND adding powdered sugar and sliced almonds after they came out of the oven. This time the dough was a little stickier, but overall they proved to be a sweet, yummy snack. (I had them for snacks and breakfast.)
I’m still working on achieving sorceress status. I don’t need any men to fall instantly in love with me, but I’d love to have my children obey my every command. Anyone have a scone recipe they can offer to help me out?
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Connect with Sara Daniel: