The BEST Chocolate Chip Scones

Chocolate Chip Scones

Semi-sweet chocolate chips (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This recipe could change your life.  Seriously.

I got this wonderful recipe from my dear friend, Anne.  She gave it to me years ago.  I wrote it in my favorite recipe notebook on the very first page.  The numbers are a bit smudged, but thankfully I nearly have it memorized.

Recipes I’ve been saving for 15 years or more. This scone recipe is on the very FIRST page of this notebook!

(This notebook was the topic of another blog post:  http://haskerj.wordpress.com/2013/06/09/what-once-was-lost-now-is-found/)

This recipe makes the lightest, richest, more delectable scones!  They are not dry or crumbly at all.  You MUST use the cream!  No substitutes.

Enjoy!  Happy baking.  Please let me know how you like them.

Three variations: white chocolate with fresh raspberries, cinnamon chip, and toffee chocolate chip. Photo by Anne Marie

To make the fabulous scones you will need:

2 c. flour
1 T. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1/4 c. sugar (plus a bit more for sprinkling on top)
1 1/4 c. heavy cream
3/4 c. choc. chips (I use semi-sweet, special dark are excellent, too — mini chips or regular — as you please)
later for brushing on before baking:  2 T. melted butter

Heat oven to 425 degrees.

You need a large mixing bowl, a fork or whisk, a spatula, a clean space to knead, and a good cookie sheet (ungreased).

Mix dry ingredients together (flour, baking powder, salt, 1/4 c. sugar).  Whisk or fluff with a fork to mix.

Add chips, then cream.  Don’t stir too much at this point, just until it all hangs together.

Empty the blob out onto a lightly floured surface and knead it about 10 times working in a bit a flour if it is too sticky.

Pat into a 9 or 10 inch circle.  Brush the top and sides w/ the melted butter (1 to 2 T.) and sprinkle w/ the extra sugar (1 to 2 T. is plenty).

Cut into 12 wedges and separate.

Place on ungreased (or spray w/ PAM) baking sheet.

Bake 14 to 15 min. until just barely beginning to get light brown.  You can bake them longer if you like them browner or crunchier on the bottom (but you would be wrong…).

These are EXCELLENT with very cold milk or very hot, freshly ground and brewed coffee.  🙂  Or both.

comments:

• You must use heavy cream.  Anything else will not work.
• I have skipped the kneading and dropped them onto a cookie sheet from a scooper.  Pat them down w/ fingers and sprinkle w/ sugar.  This is ok in a time crunch, but is not quite as spectacularly good.
• It is baking powder, not baking soda.  Don’t ask me how I know this.
• I believe the true way to bake scones, is to pat the circle onto the cookie sheet then cut and bake them that way without separating them.  I’ve never done it that way b/c I rarely follow directions unless absolutely necessary.
• I use a serrated knife to cut the scones and a spatula to put them on the cookie sheet.
• This recipe is from my dear friend, Anne Donovan.  🙂
• I once tried to figure out how to count these on Weight Watchers.  I came to the conclusion that they count as a “mistake.”
• Did I mention these are delicious?

As far as I can tell this recipe has been PINNED on Pinterest more than 50 times.  It could be a lot more than that, because my blog stats record a lot of views of this recipe on The Tromp Queen blog.  However famous these scones have become, though, I think of my dear friend, Anne, every single time I make them and wish I could be eating them with her and chatting over a nice hot cup of freshly brewed coffee.  ❤

Grandma Schwob’s Baked Apples

image by Marius Watz; via Flickr CC license. NYC0712 142 Red Hots

This is a family recipe.  I remember these VERY well from my childhood.

Ingredients:
apples (however many you want to make).
white sugar
flour
salt
red-hot candies (see photo)
small white marshmallow

Peel apples.  Cut them in half and dig out the cores, leaving half apple cups.
Rub a little lemon or orange juice on them if you don’t like them getting brown.

image by Kat Martinez, via Flickr CC “peeled, stacks and stacks”

Mix together:
3/4 c. sugar (Grandma used white — this amount of sugar covered a 13×9 pan full of apple halves)
1 T. flour
dash of salt

Place apples cut side up in a glass or stainless steel baking pan. Sprinkle the flour/sugar/salt mixture over the top of the apples.  Add a couple of handfuls of red-hot candies trying to keep most of them IN or ON the apples. (*NOTE:  These are not Hot Tamales. They are the little red cinnamon candy pieces.)  Pour some water carefully into the bottom of the baking dish (not all over the top so you don’t mess up the goodies).  Bake until tender.  Right before it is done, put marshmallows on. (She used the small white marshmallows).  (*Continue baking for just a few more minutes until the marshmallows melt and puff up.  You can brown them a bit if you watch them carefully, but don’t let them burn!)

 

image by Kent Landerholm via Flickr CC license: marshmallows

That is it.  That is all there is on the recipe card.  It looks like my very young handwriting so I’m assuming she must have dictated it to me when I asked her for the recipe.

I’m guessing 350 degrees for about 30 min.?  The card doesn’t say.

The apple trees in my grandparents very large backyard were mostly a variety my mom called “transparent.”  They were fairly small, light green or pale yellow-skinned and very tart.  Grandma made delicious pies and baked apples, and she must have made other stuff, too — like apple sauce.

I really liked the pie, but I think the baked apples were my favorite, though, because of the red-hot candies and marshmallows.

If I were going to tweak this recipe, I would definitely add some a dusting of cinnamon and maybe some nutmeg or Penzey’s Apple Pie Spice.  I would probably use less sugar and would think about using all or at least half brown sugar.  Baking the apples in apple juice instead of water would probably improve the taste, too.

You could use the larger marshmallows if needed.  I would probably cut them in half or even quarters.  The small ones work really well for this if you can find them.