Developing a New Recipe - Whole Wheat Blueberry Scones, Part 2

Part I - Part II - Part III

When I start out with a new recipe, I bake it over and over, day after day until I get it to the point that I want. This morning I baked a new recipe of my whole wheat blueberry scones. All day yesterday I ran those scones through my mind. Asking myself where I wanted to go with it today. Normally, when I am close I will only vary elements of the recipe one or two items at a time, but, in the end, I decided that yesterday's scones were pretty far from where I wanted to be. They were fine, but not exactly what I wanted.

Beautiful color and little more spread out

Here is today's recipe. I will explain below why I made these specific changes.

 Adam's Whole Wheat Blueberry Scones

makes 12

dry ingredients

6.75 ounces of whole wheat flour (about 1 1/2 cups)

2 tsp baking powdered

3 TBS sugar

1/8 tsp salt

wet ingredients

1/2 cup of whole milk

1/2 TBS lemon juice

2 TBS sour cream

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla

additions

7 TBS butter

1 cup of blueberries

1/2 cup of oats

1. Preheat oven to 425 and place baking rack in the center of the oven.
2. Add vinegar to milk and set aside.
3. Whisk together dry ingredients, less the oats, in a mixing bowl. Once whisked together add blueberries. Cut butter into flour mixture. The texture should resemble cornmeal. Set aside.
4. Whisk milk, egg, and vanilla together. Combine with flour mixture. Be careful to not over mix. The dough will be sticky.
5. Spread the oats out over your work surface and turn your dough out on to the oats. Push the dough gently into the oats. Turn the dough over and gently push the remaining oats into the dough.
6. Form oat encrusted dough into a 9 inch circle. Cut the circle into 12 wedges. Transfer wedges to lined baking sheet (I use a Silpat) and bake 12 - 14 minutes, or until golden brown.

If you compare this closely with yesterday, you will notice that I substituted 3 TBS white sugar for 3 TBS of unpacked brown sugar. There just simply was not enough sweetness to cut through the wheatiness of the flour. After just eating one scone right out of the oven, I can definitively say that was a great change, but I will consider cutting back to 1 1/2 TBS tomorrow.

Next you may notice, that I went with a full half cup of milk. Yesterday, I started with the vinegar and then added milk to the half cup mark. Today, I added the lemon juice to the 1/2 cup of milk. I wanted a softer dough that would spread during baking to get that look that I see in so many scone recipes.

I added 2 TBS of sour cream to the recipe also to bring the fat up and a bit of extra water. It also compliments the lemon juice and brings up the tartness to better accent the blueberries.

Pros

• The additional water got the look that I wanted in the scones, so that is a keeper.
• The lemon really pops.
• The smell of the scones while baking got my bride out of bed before 7 o'clock.

Cons

• The scones are a little overly sweet now. I have the sugar after taste that drives me to my now empty coffee cup. I will definitely cut the sugar tomorrow.

Good food doesn't have to be calorie dense

Cook for enjoyment. Eat to live.