Vasili's Blog

Pumpkin Scones January 17

Baking 2 Comments

I've had this can of pumpkin purée go from pumpkin muffins to the freezer into the fridge for something that totally eludes my mind right that. Even after making these scones I still have some of it left over. My mom suggested to make another batch of these (since they are almost gone), but I'd rather make some pumpkin waffles.

Normally, my mother screams at me for "wasting" butter on cookies, quiche, crackers, any other delicious treats; however, this time, she told me to make another batch of them. I didn't think anyone would like them since my brother made the "ew" face when I was placing them in the oven. While I write this, he's eating another one in the other room.

I haven't picked up my camera in a good week. I knew I wanted to take some pictures of the scones when they were all dressed up in their glaze. I ended up taking about 40 pictures and only keeping 6, one of which wasn't even a picture of the scone. The pictures of them on the cooling rack: trashed. All of the picture of two scones on a plate: trashed. I blame the quality on my kitchen. It has a tiny window that allows light into the room in a 30 minute gap, and lately this hasn't even been there due to all of the cloudy weather New York is having.

With that, I leave you this recipe. One that I found on a new cooking website I absolutely adore - Pinch My Salt. You'll never want to buy another scone from Starbucks again.

1 C. all purpose flour
1 C. cake flour
1 1/2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. ground cinnamon
1/2 t. ground nutmeg
1/4 t. ground allspice
1/4 t. ground ginger
6 T. unsalted butter
1/2 C. raisins (optional)
1/3 C. pumpkin puree
1/3 C. heavy cream
6 T. brown sugar
1 t. vanilla

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Get out a baking sheet and line with parchment paper (not required but makes cleanup easy!). Cut the butter into small pieces, put it in a small bowl and put it back in the refridgerator. In a medium bowl, combine both flours, baking powder, salt, and all spices. Whisk together well. Place bowl in freezer (refrigerator is fine if you have no room in freezer).

2. In a separate bowl, combine pumpkin, heavy cream, brown sugar, and vanilla. Whisk together well. Put this bowl in freezer (or refrigerator) and take the other bowl back out. Get the butter pieces out of the fridge and dump them into the bowl with the flour mixture. Cut the butter into the flour using a pastry blender or rub it in with your fingertips until it resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in the raisins if you are using them.

3. Get the liquid mixture out of the freezer and pour into the flour mixture all at once. Stir with a wooden spoon until everything is just moistened. The dough will be very crumbly, this is the way it should be. Turn the mixture out onto the counter and push the pile together with your hands. It should stick together fairly well. Knead it just a couple of times until everything is together. Don’t knead it too much or the dough will get too sticky.

4. Pat the dough out into a rough circle, 3/4 to 1 inch thick. Cut it like a pie into 8 pieces. Place pieces on the baking sheet so that they are not touching. Bake scones for about 15 minutes at 425 degrees. They should be light brown on the bottom, the tops will darken as they cool.

Icing: For ginger molasses icing, stir together 1 T. molasses, 1-2 T. milk, and 1/4 – 1/2 t. ground ginger (to taste). Adjust the amount of sugar or milk to make the icing the consistency you want. It should be pretty thick. For cinnamon icing, mix together 1 C. powdered sugar, 2 T. milk, 1/4 – 1/2 t. cinnamon (to taste). Again, adjust amounts to change consistency. Icing can be brushed on or drizzled.

Note: I ended up using the cinnamon icing because I don't really enjoy molasses. I was originally doing to use the molasses icing, but when I made it I added too much milk and didn't feel like trying to fix it (it didn't taste very good anyway).