The Electron Pencil

On the home front, I’ve been experimenting with different scone recipes. I’m addicted to scones. Which is odd because, generally, any culinary thing from the British Isles excites me about as much as the prospect of vacuuming the house. But scones? Oh, baby, count me in.

I found one recipe that calls for only butter as the fat and another that calls for both butter and cream of tartar. Both turned out terrific, if a tad funky-looking. Basically, I just roll a little ball of dough in my hands and then smash it down like a hockey puck.

I’ve tried mixing in chocolate chips and fresh blueberries. Raisins ought to be good too. I sprinkle powdered sugar on top of the scones after they’ve been out of the oven for a few minutes. By the way, some recipes call for too much leavening so you might want to experiment yourself

If you’ve a mind to, try this recipe:

Simple Scones

INGREDIENTS

• • 2 cups All-purpose flout
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 1/2 tsp Baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp Salt
  • 8 tbsp Frozen unsalted butter
  • 1/2 cup Chocolate chips, blueberries, raisins, or whatever
  • 1/2 cup Sour cream
  • 1 large Egg
  • Powdered sugar to sprinkle

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 400ºF. Cover a baking pan with parchment paper.

In large-ish bowl, mix flour, sugar, salt and soda together. Using your grater, grate or shred frozen butter into mixture. Then squish it all together with your hands and fingers until the mixture starts looking like coarse crumbs. Add your chips or fruits or whatever, combining everything with your hands.

In a small bowl whisk the egg and sour cream together until you get a nice liquid. Stir this into the dry mixture and mix with your wooden spoon until everything looks like a bunch of dough-y clumps. Then, using your hands, knead the dough for about a minute and form it into a big ball.

Cut the ball into eight equal portions. Form each into a little ball and then smush it down into a small hockey puck. Place pucks on the parchment and bake until golden brown on top, about 15 minutes.

Eat.

I was surprised to learn how easy it is to make scones. By the way, I agree with Larry David. On Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season 10, Episode 1, he gets into a big argument with Mocha Joe over scones, among other coffeehouse-y things. Mocha Joe says scones should be soft; Larry David advocates hardness. I’m with LD. Not hard like they’re stale, but more like they’re…, um, substantial.

In non-culinary news, I’m juggling my work on a book-length history of radio station WFHB, my Big Talk radio interview program, and my and Tristra Newyear’s Do One Thing local events podcast.

I’ve been on a cool run these last few weeks on Big Talk. Yesterday, I sat down in the studio with singer/songwriter Krista Detor and her partner, musician, producer, and audio engineer, David Weber. The two of them run The Hundredth Hill artists’ retreat on their wooded 50-acre tract of land north of Bloomington. Krista tells the tale of attending a women’s artists’ retreat at Hedgebrook on Whidbey Island in Washington state a few years ago. She came home to Bloomington amped up to start something like it right here and, around seven years ago, she and Weber started building out guest rooms for residencies.

Their retreat offers stages, a recording studio, and a bunch of other features that help writers, musicians, actors, poets, and any other kind of creative types actually do…, well, creative things.

Hey, if you catch this week’s Big Talk with guests Krista and David, you’ll find out that Hundredth Hill almost was named after a fruit jelly you could spread on your scone. Well, maybe not almost, but someone suggested it. Don’t you just love random associations?

In other news, I’ve been invited to guest on Steve Volan’s The 812 Show podcast. He, Tristra, and I have been logrolling each other for a while now, hoping to goose interest in our respective podcasts.

And speaking of geese, this week’s Do One Thing, Episode 9, dropped this morning. I’m already working on next week’s episode and I’ve dug up a neat thing for you to do at the Goose Pond Fish & Wildlife Area, about 50 miles west-southwest of Bloomington. If you’ve never been out there, now’s the time to rectify it.