Strawberry Scones

Tim and I went to our first wedding as a married couple yesterday :) Not that that's very exciting haha, but it brought back memories of our wedding. I watched our wedding video yesterday morning and listened to our wedding music as I made Tim breakfast. Pancakes and turkey bacon. I just love mornings like this. It had rained all night; when I woke up, our home was 75 degrees, so I opened all the windows and let the breeze come in. Just perfect. Then add in pancakes for breakfast, and it makes for the perfect start to a day. You know what else makes for a perfect day? Strawberries. Mixed with heavy cream, butter, lemon zest..oh boy...are you salivating yet?

If a recipe has butter and heavy cream, you know that it's going to be good! Ignore the orange, wrong recipe :D

These didn't raise as much as I had hoped, but Tim tasted them and said he liked them even more than the cranberry/lemon scones I previously made, and he doesn't necessarily care for strawberries :) I personally loved them-I almost think they could take the place of strawberry shortcake. Almost. Just look at that lemon zest. Strawberries and lemon zest were destined for each other. And glaze. 

These are slightly sour surprisingly because of the strawberries, but add that glaze on top and all sourness is forgotten, it's perfectly balanced. These make for a delicious dessert, but I've had them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner... 

Fresh Strawberry Scones (adapted from Popsicle Blog)

ingredients

1 cup fresh strawberries, chopped

4T sugar

A bunch of lemon zest (eyeball it-you know how much you like-I love the zing it brings, so I put in the zest of a whole lemon) 

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

6T unsalted butter, in cubes, slightly softened

2/3 cup heavy cream

1 extra T sugar to top

directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly grease a cookie sheet or line with parchment (or just use a nonstick pan). 

Chop strawberries into small pieces. Zest your lemon. Toss the strawberries and lemon zest with 1/2T sugar and set aside to macerate. Combine remaining dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add butter and combine using a pastry cutter or your hands. Probably a pastry cutter, it's pretty messy. Unless you love using your hands, then go for it. Then you can lick your hands afterwards, which is very rewarding. Add the strawberries and heavy cream, and stir until it all holds together and the dry ingredients are just combined. 

Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead a few times to get everything sticking together (note: my dough was still pretty sticky after kneading due to the wet strawberries [duh!]. Don't worry, they'll dry out a bit in the oven :D). Either roll your dough out with a rolling pin or just use your hands. You want your dough about 3/4" thick. Cut into wedges, circles, whatever you want. You can seriously use whatever cutter you have, but scones are primarily wedges or circular :). Transfer to the cookies sheet.

Bake for 15 minutes. Sprinkle tops of scones with the 1T extra sugar and bake an additional 5-10 minutes until the tops are golden brown and spring back when you touch them. Place on rack to cool.

glaze

Mix 1 cup of powdered sugar with 1T milk. Add more milk if it needs to be thinned out. Drizzle over the scones. Note: you will make a mess. If you look in the second picture, you'll see the glaze that has dripped off the scones. To clean, lick your counter. It's yummy. Unless of course you're a germ freak, then just clean it with a wet washcloth.

Makes about 10-12 scones