I’ve come to the conclusion that resolutions are simply pointless. In fact, statistics show that only 9% of people who make resolutions at the beginning of the new year actually report achieving them several months later. My perpetual resolution, which I routinely make upon returning from vacation, is to “get organized.” There’s something about staying in a tidy hotel/condominium/cruise ship room that makes me loath returning to my own house full of unorganized “stuff” and each time I do I then proceed to purge it of items we simply no longer use. Since we enter our house via our kitchen and it serves as its hub, it’s usually the spot I tackle first. One of my kitchen pet peeves is the piles of papers, books, toys and gloves strewn across the granite countertops. Next up are the kitchen cabinets where labels on repurposed Tupperware containers are put to work to contain miscellaneous packaged food items such as instant oatmeal and popcorn. Cooking utensils? Those I admittedly have trouble parting with. Those may be reshuffled but are rarely thrown away which is why in the depths of the bottom drawer of my oven is a cast iron scone pan.
I simply love each and every cooking tool I have and whether or not they get used is irrelevant. Sadly, while most days I cannot remember the most basic things (like where I hid my husband’s birthday gift), I can recall specifically where I’ve acquired each and every cooking utensil in my kitchen and specifically what makes it so special from my mini piano wire whisk (a gift from my former boss courtesy of Stonewall Kitchen that is the perfect size) to the set of flat wooden spoons (courtesy of a Pampered Chef party that come in handy when using non-stick pans), to the cast iron scone pan.
I bought the scone pan many years ago in Williams Sonoma during a lunch break shopping trip when I still worked in New York City. Those long gone weekends consisted of leisurely breakfasts with french press coffee and perfectly symmetrical scones. With school called off, (yet again), this morning March 6 on account of snow I thought making scones would be a fun family project.
Ingredients:2 1/2 cups flour;1 tablespoon baking powder;
1/2 teaspoon salt;1 stick butter, cut into pieces;
1/4 cup sugar;2/3 cup milk;1 teaspoon lemon or almond extract
Extras, if desired, such as nuts, raisins, chocolate chips or cranberries.
Instructions:Preheat oven to 425 degrees, put flour baking powder and salt into a large bowl and mix well, add the butter to the bowl and stir with a pastry blender (or a fork if you don’t own a pastry blender) until the mixture appears to be crumbly. Add the sugar and then the milk and stir until dough forms. Add in any desired extras. Form the dough into a ball and pat it into a 6″ circle. Cut into 6 or 8 wedges (or if you also have a scone pan fill each compartment half way with dough). Sprinkle with sugar, if desired. Bake about 12 minutes. Enjoy!
Fortunately, my husband’s gift (concert tickets) turned up “somewhere safe” (code-word in our house for my having put something somewhere and then proceeded to forget where). Perhaps next time I need to hide something I should do it in the kitchen. Perhaps inside a rarely-used french press coffee maker.
Felicia Fisher is the founder of the Black Buggy Baking Company and lives in Oley, Pa. with her husband and three children who are all willing taste-testers. For more information on what Felicia’s baking up visit her web page www.blackbuggybakingcompany.com or e-mail her at blackbuggybakingcompany@yahoo.com.