Camp Out!

This past weekend we had an awesome camping experience with friends. I am not the best at camping but the experience was seriously improved by the company we were keeping, the air mattress my dad lent me, the great weather and the lack of mosquitoes. And it didn't hurt that this particular group of people happen to be fantastic cooks.

For the first time ever while camping I had ribs, a sampling of the biggest steak I have ever seen, grilled veggies, risotto, oatmeal, bagels and lox, cookies, and bars, all in addition to the regular camp fare of hot dogs, chips, etc. My contribution was pumpkin scones with cinnamon/pumpkin spice icing and cheddar bay biscuits. Yup, like the biscuits from Red Lobster. You can find anything you want on the interwebs. Lucky for me I had leftovers of both that I popped in the freezer and now will enjoy at my leisure. Yesterday I made a breakfast sandwich out of one of the biscuits and today I had a scone with my morning latte.

My only regret of the weekend was not taking pictures. I took none. Fail.

In other news, today I learned to sharpen knives and on Thursday I will have to use them. Did you place your bets yet?

Lazy Daisy

I have done very little that can be considered productive this week. I blame allergies and a new job. Today I decided that I had better do something or this blog will be boresville. I'm sticking with the theme of trying to use up what I have on hand. Right now I have cucumbers, which will be dealt with soon I hope, and strawberries. My friend gave me a huge container of strawberries that were left over from a party. Yesterday I brought them to another friend's house and we dipped them in chocolate ganache that I had leftover. We used up the chocolate but hardly made a dent in the berries. Today I decided to make my favorite scones to use up a few more. As a bonus, I had some left over marzipan too!

As usual, I don't have a scone recipe that I love so I made a hybrid of two that I like. I like my scones to be light, fluffy, flaky and not too sweet. This recipe pretty much met those criteria.

Strawberry Marzipan Scones
2 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
3 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp kosher salt
6 tbsp chilled butter cut into small pieces
1/2 cup chopped strawberried
1/2 cup marzipan cut into smallish pieces
3/4 cup heavy cream

Preheat oven to 400.
Mix the first 5 ingredients together on low speed for about 3 minutes or until crumbly. Add the strawberries and marzipan and combine on low speed. Slowly add the cream and mix until combined. I like to kneed the dough a little bit here to make sure everything sticks together.
On a floured surface roll out the dough to 1/2 inch. I like to roll the dough into a vaguely circle-like shape and then cut the dough into wedges. You can also cut with a cookies cutter. You should get 10-12 scones.
Place on baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes. Cool on wire rack.

If you like a sweeter scone you could bump up the sugar level a little. I consider this recipe a work in progress but it works for now. I plan on working on a savory scone next. Yum!