For a work brunch I decided to make Cornmeal Scones. My specific thought was, “I make scones all the time – it’ll be fast and easy!”
These were easily the most frustrating scones I’ve made.
This scones recipe does not take butter or margarine, which most every other recipe I’ve ever made has taken. I whisked together flour, a small amount of fine cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, salt, and orange zest (which really clumped up, rather than mixing in evenly). Next I added the currants, and set the mixture aside until the next morning when I planned to bake them.
The next morning, I mixed the cream, egg, and vanilla extract together separately, and stirred it into the flour mixture. The real issue with this recipe is that this was much too much liquid for the amount of flour. The dough didn’t “just come together,” which implies that it’s a dry (or even moist-but-handleable) dough where everything just gets moistened. This was a sticky, goopy mess that I couldn’t even begin to handle without adding more flour. I floured a surface, dumped and scraped the dough onto it, and tried to knead the dough. However, the dough just absorbed the flour as I spun it around trying to make it less sticky. Once I could pat it out into a circle without it sticking to every surface it touched, I transferred it to a different, less sticky surface to cut it into 8 wedges. I brushed them with cream and baked them for between 15 and 20 minutes.
These scones tasted okay, but were seriously tough from all the extra kneading I did to add the flour I needed to give them structure. The primary flavor was orange zest, which was fine, but with the additional flour I had to add I couldn’t taste the cornmeal at all. I’ve made some excellent scones in the past, but I was very disappointed in these after the extra work I had to do to get the dough to not be so loose. I wouldn’t make these again.
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