Fresh Blueberry Scones – Gluten Free, Casein Free

Mary Frances — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 03:06:33 +0000

A few weeks ago I posted a lesson on How to Make Gluten Free Scones Like a Bakery. Several of you asked for my scone recipe, so I made it again this weekend so that I could take pictures for the post. It was a close thing on the pictures though. I had to snatch the serving dish away to snap a few shots before John and David had seconds. The final scone count was John – 4, David – 2, Mary Frances – 2.

Fresh Blueberry Scones

Ingredients:
2 c. Gluten Free, Soy Free All Purpose Flour Mix
1/3 c. sugar
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. xanthan gum
1/2 tsp. salt
6 Tbsp. vegetable shortening
1 large egg, beaten
1/2 c. soy or rice milk
1/2 c. frozen blueberries
Cinnamon Sugar

Directions:
1. Mix all of the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
2. Cut the vegetable shortening (or vegan butter) into the dry ingredients until the largest crumbs are the size of peas.
3. Add the egg and soy milk to the dry ingredients, and mix until everything is thoroughly combined.
4. Fold the blueberries into the dough and knead a few times so that they are evenly distributed.
5. Cut your scones into wedges and place on a lightly greased baking sheet. Drizzle melted butter over the top and sprinkle with Cinnamon Sugar.
6. Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 20 minutes.
7. Hide your share of the scones before the scone-starved husband and child realize they are out of the oven!

How to Make Scones Like a Bakery

Mary Frances — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 06:15:26 +0000

One of my favorite things about scones is their shape. There’s just something about that wedge that makes a scone something more than a slightly sweet biscuit. A lot of the scones recipes that I’ve found online call for making drop scones, but it’s really easy to take a few extra minutes to cut the scones into wedges. Here’s how:

1. First, pat the dough into a round that is approximately 3/4″ thick.

2. Then, cut the dough into 6 – 8 wedges.

3. Separate the wedges and place them about an inch apart on a greased baking sheet.

4. Brush milk or butter over the tops of the scones and sprinkle with sugar.

Gluten Free Breakfast Scones

Mary Frances — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 13:24:51 +0000

Please welcome a new guest author, Kristina Kofski, who shares her recipe for gluten free scones ~ Mary Frances

I am not a morning person.

In fact, I’ve been known to hit the snooze button for a good 45 minutes in the morning, until my poor fiancé is ready to throw the alarm clock (or me) out the window. If I could, I’d sleep in until the sun was high in the sky each day…however, as a teacher, staying in bed until 10:00 am is definitely not in the cards. So, each day I continue to drag myself out of bed, all the while listening to my body scream, “No! No! No! It’s still dark outside!”

Needless to say, I need a quick breakfast in the morning. Definitely can’t think of skipping it, because if I haven’t bit into breakfast, I’m liable to bite your head off. These scones fit the bill perfectly- throw one in the microwave to warm it up, let the top get a little crispy in the toaster oven, and there you have it, a delicious, healthy breakfast that can be eaten in just a few minutes flat before rushing out the door.

I was diagnosed with celiac in 1991. I had just turned 13 years old, and was falling further and further below the growth curve (to this day, most of my students who are in the fourth grade or higher are taller than me). A series of torturous, trial-and-error hospital visits finally led us to celiac sprue (though I was really fortunate, and it was only seven months from the first test to the diagnosis). Let me tell you, the few gluten-free food items that were available at the time, well—to call them terrible might be too much of a compliment. Pasta noodles that looked, felt, and tasted like tapeworms…products that resembled not so much crackers as pieces of styrofoam…“pancakes” that hadn’t earned the right to be called by that name…

To be honest, I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast for much of junior high and high school. I think I skipped it most days. Fortunately, as I headed towards high school graduation, my mom and I started to wander into the world of gluten-free baking, and we discovered this scone recipe. The original recipe came from a booklet published by the Gluten-Free Pantry, and called for a significant amount of their French Bread and Pizza Mix. Over the years, I’ve taken out most to all of the GFP mix (sorry, guys—I love your products, but they’re not exactly easy on the pocketbook, you know?) and replaced it with mostly whole-grain flours, resulting in a healthier, more filling scone.

When I went off to college, 1500 miles from home, my mom baked a batch of these scones every weekend, and every Monday, my dad shipped them by 2-day air to ensure that they’d arrive in Boston, still fresh and delicious. Now that’s love.

Gluten Free Breakfast Scones
adapted from a Gluten-Free Pantry recipe

1/3 cup toasted nuts
1 to 1½ cups dried fruit (whatever kinds you like- let your imagination run wild!)
1/3 cup dried currants (this doesn’t count towards your 1 to 1½ cups above)
½ cup Perky’s Nutty Rice Cereal
1 tbsp. grated citrus zest (lemon, orange, or lime)

1½ cups brown rice flour
½ cup sorghum flour
¾ cup Gluten-Free Pantry French Bread and Pizza Mix OR ¾ cup Bette Hagman’s Gluten-Free Mix* plus 1 tsp. xanthan gum
1 tbsp. baking powder
¾ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. ground ginger
1/3 cup brown sugar
4 tbsp. butter

½ cups yogurt (if your yogurt isn’t flavored, add 1 tsp. vanilla extract or other flavoring)
3 egg whites
3 tbsp. citrus juice (lemon, orange, or lime)
1½ tbsp. vegetable oil

*Bette Hagman’s Gluten Free Mix Recipe is available in her books, but you can probably find it online as well.

Instructions:
1. Chop nuts and any larger pieces of dried fruit, such as apricots or plums.

2. Mix nuts, dried fruit (including currants), Perky’s, and fruit zest.

3. In a separate bowl, sift together your flours, baking powder, baking soda, and ginger. Add brown sugar. Mix, breaking up any clumps of brown sugar.

4. Cut in butter, with either a pastry blender or food processor.

5. In a third bowl, whisk together the yogurt, egg whites, citrus juice, and oil.

6. Add it to the flour mixture and stir to blend. Stir in the fruit/nut mixture.

7. Spoon the batter onto a well-greased baking sheet. You can make your scones as big or as little as you’d like.

8. Bake in a preheated 400º oven for 18-20 minutes, rotating 180º halfway through baking. Scones are done when the tops are golden brown.

9. Cool on the baking sheet for several minutes, then remove to a cooling rack.

Tips:
1. Use finely-grated fruit zest- the flavor distributes itself better.

2. Just a reminder for anyone who might be new to GF baking- the GFP French Bread and Pizza mix contains guar gum, so it already has its stretch factor. Bette Hagman’s flour blend doesn’t contain anything but flour, so you need to add xanthan gum. The scones taste funny and are more crumbly without it.

3. If you’d like to cut back the amount of sugar in the recipe, don’t pack the brown sugar- just spoon it into the measuring cup as you would for white sugar.

4. Use a good brand of yogurt- it makes a huge difference! My favorite is the maple flavored cream top yogurt from Brown Cow- the scones come out creamy and delicious. But a close second places goes to any yogurt from Cascade Fresh, simply because they care enough to mark their yogurt packaging with those two magic words- “gluten free.”

5. Your scones will spread more or less depending on the thickness of your yogurt. The scones pictured stayed in such nice little mounds that I truly worried I had done something wrong, because my scones usually spread into each other during baking. I think they didn’t spread this time because I used Cascade Fresh yogurt, which is significantly thicker than most yogurts you buy. Oh, and I may have gone a little bit overboard with the dried fruit.

6. You can also throw other ingredients in- I’ve mashed up bananas and put them in, and when we had some pumpkin left over at Thanksgiving, we made pumpkin-cranberry scones. Delicious! Just decrease your yogurt slightly when you add another wet ingredient.

7. These scones freeze well, but eat them within 2 weeks for the best flavor.

Gluten Free Cooking School » scone

Fresh Blueberry Scones – Gluten Free, Casein Free

Fresh Blueberry Scones

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How to Make Scones Like a Bakery

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Gluten Free Breakfast Scones

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