We are blessed to have two terrific daughter's in law and they both have April birthdays which we were able to celebrate together with most of the family in attendance. Kathy wanted a Fruit Pizza on our Coffee Pot sugar cookie dough, and it was a great, delicious success.
Jenny doesn't love sweets and her birthday dessert choice was Cinnamon Walnut Scones which we used to make at the Coffee Pot. Unfortunately, we no longer make them so they would have been a special order and I didn't want to have our kitchen have to make a special order of scones for such a small batch.
Not to worry. After all, didn't I start the Coffee Pot Bakery Cafe? Didn't I win lots of ribbons at the Montana Winter Fair for my baked goods? Didn't I know how to make scones? I would make them myself, and privately (or not so privately, my husband reminded me) I was fairly certain that I could make better scones than our bakers.
Next to my pride, my second mistake was to get an unfamiliar recipe off of the internet for scones. It was touted as the "best scone recipe ever!" and had a 4.5 star review. In my search, I might have even found a better scone recipe for us to use at the bakery!
The day of the birthday arrives and I pull out butter (lots of it!), cream (lots of it, too!) flour, etc and begin to make the scones. The recipe called for a baking temperature of 450° which should have been a red flag, but no, I pressed doggedly on. Halfway through the process, my daughter in law asked if I might use partial whole wheat flour. Hmmm. Should have been another red flag, but I decided to just add to what I had started and make a triple batch instead of a double batch as I had planned. By now, there were enough red flags to make a Tibetan prayer flag, but I ignored them all.
I cram the very wet, sticky scone dough into the oven at 450° and soon there is smoke boiling out of the oven and the distinct fragrance of burning sugar. I rotated the three pans of scones several times so that they wouldn't all be black on the bottom, but that idea was simply not working, and they all were equally scorched. On the bottom only, unfortunately. The top two thirds was mushy. The family was coming and it was time for dessert. One would have thought that using nearly a pound of butter would have made them easy to get off of the pan, but no, they all stuck. That was actually not a bad thing, because some of the very burned bottom third of the scones stayed on the pan.
I have a gracious family. They each ate a scone and said, "they aren't that bad". No one had seconds. Surprise.
Pride does indeed go before the fail and I humbly asked for the recipe our bakery uses and made another batch of scones. These I baked at 275°, made them without whole wheat flour, didn’t make a triple batch, and was properly chagrined about my previous attitude. They came out fine. Not even close to as good as those at the Coffee Pot, but good enough, and I learned another life lesson about pride.
-Jennie Lockie
Jenny doesn't love sweets and her birthday dessert choice was Cinnamon Walnut Scones which we used to make at the Coffee Pot. Unfortunately, we no longer make them so they would have been a special order and I didn't want to have our kitchen have to make a special order of scones for such a small batch.
Not to worry. After all, didn't I start the Coffee Pot Bakery Cafe? Didn't I win lots of ribbons at the Montana Winter Fair for my baked goods? Didn't I know how to make scones? I would make them myself, and privately (or not so privately, my husband reminded me) I was fairly certain that I could make better scones than our bakers.
Next to my pride, my second mistake was to get an unfamiliar recipe off of the internet for scones. It was touted as the "best scone recipe ever!" and had a 4.5 star review. In my search, I might have even found a better scone recipe for us to use at the bakery!
The day of the birthday arrives and I pull out butter (lots of it!), cream (lots of it, too!) flour, etc and begin to make the scones. The recipe called for a baking temperature of 450° which should have been a red flag, but no, I pressed doggedly on. Halfway through the process, my daughter in law asked if I might use partial whole wheat flour. Hmmm. Should have been another red flag, but I decided to just add to what I had started and make a triple batch instead of a double batch as I had planned. By now, there were enough red flags to make a Tibetan prayer flag, but I ignored them all.
I cram the very wet, sticky scone dough into the oven at 450° and soon there is smoke boiling out of the oven and the distinct fragrance of burning sugar. I rotated the three pans of scones several times so that they wouldn't all be black on the bottom, but that idea was simply not working, and they all were equally scorched. On the bottom only, unfortunately. The top two thirds was mushy. The family was coming and it was time for dessert. One would have thought that using nearly a pound of butter would have made them easy to get off of the pan, but no, they all stuck. That was actually not a bad thing, because some of the very burned bottom third of the scones stayed on the pan.
I have a gracious family. They each ate a scone and said, "they aren't that bad". No one had seconds. Surprise.
Pride does indeed go before the fail and I humbly asked for the recipe our bakery uses and made another batch of scones. These I baked at 275°, made them without whole wheat flour, didn’t make a triple batch, and was properly chagrined about my previous attitude. They came out fine. Not even close to as good as those at the Coffee Pot, but good enough, and I learned another life lesson about pride.
-Jennie Lockie
RSS Feed
