Hi there!

Hope you’re having a good day.

Happy Spring!

I just finished reading a fun book called A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher, and I really wanted to bake something.

Usually, I bake cookies.

But today, I felt like scones.

Spoiler alert: They are not gorgeous.

I wasn’t going to post pictures until I could make the scones look perfect.

But then I thought, there are so many pictures of perfection on blogs…and perfection isn’t necessarily real life.

So these scones are imperfect.

They are real.

And they taste delicious.

If we wait for perfection before showing up, we could be waiting forever.

So go ahead and be real.

Be imperfect.

Show your flaws.

Show your human-ness.

All of it is good.

Now let me sprinkle a little everyday magic into this scones recipe, too, because…why not?

I used cherries—which have the magical property of creating new beginnings—and lemon, which has the magical property of happiness. (You knew a lot of foods have magical properties, right?)

A perfect recipe for spring!

This recipe looks long and tedious.

It’s not, though.

It’s based on a scone recipe from hecafesucrefarine.com called “Ridiculously Easy Lemon Raspberry Scones.”

In addition to tweaking the name, I’ve also tweaked the recipe.

Magical-Beginnings Scones

Prep Time: Up to 1 ½ hours (Don’t let this scare you off! It includes the time that the dough is chilling in the freezer)

Cook Time: 18-20 minutes

Total Time: About 2 hours (but a lot of that is waiting! Go write! Go read!)

Ingredients (for the scones):

• 1 cup heavy cream
• 8 tablespoons butter
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 8 tablespoons sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon baking soda (don’t mix these up!)
• ½ teaspoon salt
• Zest of one medium lemon
• ¾ cup frozen pitted cherries

Ingredients (for the glaze):

• 1 cup powdered sugar
• Lemon juice—about 2 tablespoons
• Milk—enough to be able to drizzle the glaze

Instructions:

1. Put heavy cream in the freezer for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, use fork to stir it up. Put it back in the freezer for another 15 minutes. Then stir it up again.

2. Meanwhile, add flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, lemon zest and salt in a medium-size bowl. Whisk (or use a fork) to combine. Set aside.

3. When the cream is in the freezer for its second 15 minutes, melt butter in microwave or in a small pot on the stove. Let it cool for about 10 minutes.

4. Add frozen-ish cream to butter. Stir with a fork. It’ll be chunky. That’s how you want it.

5. Add the cream/butter mixture to the flour mixture and stir to combine. Dough will be thick, like cookie dough. Don’t worry if it doesn’t come together.

6. Stir in your cherries.

7. Take the dough, plop it onto waxed paper (to make clean-up easier).

8. Use your clean hands to make a ball with the dough. Flatten it with the palms of your hands to about an inch thick. Use a biscuit cutter or juice glass to cut circles from the dough. DO NOT TWIST BISCUIT CUTTER OR GLASS (that prevents them from rising). Use the tip of a knife to pop out the dough. Place on parchment or waxed paper on a plate. Pop the scones into the freezer for 15 minutes or—better still—up to an hour.

9. Now’s a good time to preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

10. After scones have chilled, transfer them to a parchment-covered baking sheet, about 2 inches apart. Bake for 18-20 minutes until scones are golden on top.

11. Let cool them cool completely before drizzling the glaze with a spoon. Be as heavy-handed as you like.

Note: You can use any fruit you like: bananas, raspberries, blueberries, raisins. You can also put a dollop of whipped cream on your baked scone.

Let me know if you were able to get your scones to rise?

The first time I made these, I didn’t freeze the cream long enough and I placed the scones too close together on the baking sheet.

They spread until they looked like a sheet cake.

Still good though.

Don’t be afraid of imperfection.

Not with these scones.

Not with anything.

Enjoy.

~gail

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