Cranberry Orange Scones
I’m not a great baker. Years ago, I had the fantasy I might become one and open up a spot of my own, so I took a counter job at a bakery in Boston. The dream was short-lived. I watched our bakers clock out of their morning shifts at 2pm with bags under their eyes, chalky battle-scars from kitchen burns up and down their forearms. They looked like rock stars to me. Like music, it must take a special sort of madness to submit to something so grueling. Or, at least, that’s how I viewed things then.
Whatever it is that makes a calling, once you find it (or it finds you), you’re supposed to know. I don’t know that I’ve ever known. I found mine by accident. We kept moving around and piano lessons created a consistency I was lacking. It’s not exactly a romantic feeling. It still feels like work most of the time. If you’re lucky, you find your calling young. If you’re fantastically lucky you may find multiple callings. For the newly initiated, you become intimate with its staggering highs and lows. Few said your calling would come easily. Even fewer share the secret perfectly hugging their self-doubt: even though you love this thing very much and can’t imagine doing anything else, on weeks where you’re averaging under 4 hours of sleep a night or when you took a leap of faith that turned out to be more of a free climb up a cliff, you wish you could do anything else. It’s an awful lot of pressure to put on one thing, I’d argue too much. Recently, I’ve been trying to take the longview. Some days it’s clear and you can see the ocean, and others it’s foggy. Doesn’t mean the ocean isn’t there.
One day I asked a baker what she thought about the job. “If there’s anything else you can do, do that.” She sped back to her station, leveraging a hot sheet pan of sticky buns overhead, past our Chef marshaling lunch prep. The sticky buns were such a hit they went viral before there was a word for that. Once they were featured on a popular tv show our phones rang off the hook from viewers all over the country wondering if we might ship them to their grandmother’s retirement home or if they could be overnighted to a bat mitzvah party in New York. I have no idea how sticky buns hold up on a FedEx flight, hopefully better than I did at Sunday A.M. service. I was too busy slinging coffee drinks, putting extra mayo on B.L.T.s, and perspiring through my uniform. Real cute.
“If there’s anything else you can do, do that.” She had a point. There was something else. So that is what I did.
In my short time as a hopeful baker I exhausted myself on baked goods. It felt like I’d been on a Great British Bake-Off Bender. I’d had my fill of dacquoise and croissants, lemon squares and macaroons. I couldn’t even look at a sticky bun for 6 years. As my sweet tooth faded, I leaned into cooking. Baking is still something I do for special occasions, and I love the immediate, tactile pleasures that accompany it. Rubbing butter into flour, mixing the shaggy dough with your hands. It’s meditative and soothing, and who amongst us couldn’t benefit from more of that vibe?
The one thing I never quit were scones. Situated in between pastry and biscuit, scones are a friendly entry point to baking. They’re very forgiving of human error. Too dry? Add a little more milk. Too wet? More flour. You get the idea. You can improvise with their ingredients quite a bit, as I have here. My favorite scones are from Rose Bakery in Paris. Why are they so good? IMHO, It’s a combination of the AP and wheat germ which create an excellent, craggy texture and the low-sugar content. These Cranberry Orange dudes are a riff on their Blueberry Scones. Even though there are fresh cranberries in this, the sugar is at a minimum. I’ve never understood the urge in most cranberry recipes to amp the sugar to 11. Their tartness is an asset, the perfect counterpoint to bitter coffee or black tea. As a Masshole, I’m obliged to tell you Cape Cod cranberries are superior (sorry! they. just. are!) and every time I’m back home this time of year I make a point to stock up on them like they’re contraband. I like them for breakfast as an afternoon snack with more butter and marmalade. A dollop of crème fraîche wouldn’t kill you, either. I know I’m like a broken record on the crème fraîche train, but it’s so good on just about everything! I’m supposed to be packing to go visit my family this week but instead I’m preaching to you about dairy. You won’t find these scones in my own bakery anytime soon, but now you can enjoy them whenever you like. Like maybe for breakfast Thanksgiving morning?
Happy Thanksgiving to each and every one of you. <3
Cranberry Orange Scones
Adapted from the Blueberry Scone recipe in Breakfast, Lunch, Tea : The Many Little Meals of Rose Bakery by Rose Carrarini
Ingredients:
3 1/3 cups All-Purpose Flour
1/4 cup Wheat Germ or Whole Wheat Flour (Cornmeal works great too)
2 heaping Tablespoons baking powder
2 heaping Tablespoons Granulated Sugar
1 teaspoon Kosher Salt
Grated Zest of 1 Orange
1/2 cup very cold Unsalted Butter, cut into small pieces plus extra for greasing the pans
1 cup Fresh Cranberries, washed and dried
1 1/4 cup Whole Milk
2 Tbs. Maple Syrup
2 eggs, separated
1 Tablespoon Demerara Sugar, optional
Creme Fraîche, for serving
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 400 Degrees Fahrenheit and grease the baking trays with butter. I prefer to line the pan with parchment paper, too.
Sift the AP flour into a large bowl and add the the wheat or whole wheat flour. Stir with a whisk. Add to this the baking powder, granulated sugar, and salt and mix again. Add the butter and rub it into the flour mix with your fingers. I think of this as the fun part. Do this until the mix looks like loose breadcrumbs. Now mix in the orange zest.
Add the cranberries and lightly stir them into the flour mix so you don’t crush them.
In a medium bowl, crack 1 egg and beat lightly with a fork or whisk. Add the whole milk and maple syrup to this and whisk again.
Now, in the large bowl, make a well with a fork. Pour the wet ingredients into this and use the fork to gently bring it all together. You want a dough that’s a little soft yet firm. If it’s looking too floury, add a splash of milk. If it looks too wet, add a little more AP flour, and so on. You don’t want it to be sticky at all.
On a lightly floured surface, pat the dough out into a round about 1” thick. I like to use a round biscuit cutter or a water glass to cut out rounds. You could just as easily make triangles. Up to you. Place them on the baking sheet so they almost touch but not quite.
Beat the remaining egg and a small bowl and glaze the tops of the scones with a pastry brush. Sprinkle the Demerara sugar on the tops of the scones.
Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the tops are lightly golden. They will have stuck together in places, so allow them to cool a little bit before separating them gently.
Serve warm, with crème fraîche and marmalade. You can also freeze them to be reheated later.
Makes 12-15 scones.
