New Apartment, New Cooking Toys, New Recipe: Gorgonzola-Rosemary Scones

Friends, Romans, Countrymen....

I'm baAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaack!

After a number of months of seemingly endless holiday weeks at work and preparations for a life-changing move, my head is now suitably screwed on and I am ready to tickle your tastebuds again.

Yes, my new permanent location is in our nation's capital with Mr. Beta, in our *ahem* cozy 500-square-foot apartment. But it's all good.

Today, we're looking at a bit of a departure from my normal fare. You won't see a scrap of sugar (or its chemical cousins) in this here recipe. We're making things SAVORY. I needed to mix things up.

 Eh heh heh. Pun. Sorry. Moving forward.

Along with my new digs, I have all these pretty new kitchen toys and brightly colored bowls and adorably shaped measuring cups and spoons... and I just had to share.

Without further ado....

Gorgonzola-Rosemary Scones
1 1/2 C. APF 
1 1/2 C. whole wheat flour 
3 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
1 t. salt 
1/4 C. olive oil
1 egg
1 1/4 C. buttermilk 
1 C. gorgonzola cheese
healthy dash of dried rosemary leaves 

For those of you who don't know, I love making scones. Scones are delicious, scones are versatile, scones are simple SCONES SCONES SCONES.

Sometimes that little Englishperson in me gets excited about these things.

For all my forays into scone making---and, oh, how many there have been, my friends---I cannot once recall making one that was not fruity, chocolate-y, or cinnamon-y. It seemed to me that this was an endeavor worth pursuing.

Also, one of my shiny new kitchen gadgets was a Nordicware mini scone pan (thanks, Mom!). It was lonely and scone-less. How could I leave it in pain?

Okay, so now that your ingredients are together, we will get underway.

Preheat your oven to 400F.

First, combine your flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl. Whisk them together to combine them. Good job.

In a separate, smaller bowl, mix your egg, olive oil, and buttermilk. A note about buttermilk: it's okay if you don't have any on hand. Why? It's one of those nifty things you can cobble together at a moment's notice. Necessity, mother of invention. You know how it goes. Just mix a little cider vinegar into your normal dairy milk and let it sit for a while.

Dump your cheese into the bowl of dry ingredients and rub it into them until you have a bowl of fine crumbs. For a typical scone or a pastry crust, you would be doing this with butter. It's a handy technique to learn, albeit a messy one. But we like that here.

Now, slowly pour your wet ingredients into your cheesy dry ingredients and combine until a sticky dough begins to form. Pause, pour in as much or as little rosemary as you'd like, and continue mixing until the dough pulls away from the side of the bowls. Your dough is ready (yay!).

Normally, I would drop the dough by heaping spoonfuls onto a pan lined with greased foil or parchment. But  now I have a fancy-pants pan. It was a bit of a sloppy endeavor, with the spooning and the pressing and the getting sticky stuff everywhere. I believe the mess-making is a lot of the fun of baking.

Bear in mind, folks, that I have never used this type of pan before. So you'll see in the photo here that my scone babies are all different sizes. I have to learn, too.

Pop those guys into the oven for 15 to 20 minutes. My little guys took exactly 15. Test them with a toothpick or knife to see if they are thoroughly baked. The knife should come out clean if they are (though I did encounter some half-melted cheese in a few).


Voila! Scones!

Bust out that earl grey.

Happy nom-ing!

BB