Orange Date Scones by Lucy Burdette

LUCY BURDETTE: Back in 2020 in the days of the pandemic, I made a recipe of banana date scones that was fashioned after an amazing scone that we tasted in Scotland. With this scone, I had been hoping to bring back memories of happier times.  Those months and years were so hard, and we were all trying our best to figure out how to survive! For me, food was a big part of it.

Today’s recipe is another date scone, but it uses yellow Bahri Dates from California, along with orange extract and peel from Penzey’s that I’ve been meaning to try. If you don’t like the idea of so much orange, you could replace the extract with vanilla or even almond. You could also add nuts if you like. You could also add a glaze of confectioner’s sugar and orange juice. I skipped that this time.

The basic scone recipe comes from Sally’s baking addiction, with tweaks from me. She is very definite about using frozen butter that has been grated, and then mixed into the dry ingredients. So that’s what I’ve always done and they turn out well.

Preheat the oven to 400

Ingredients for the scones

2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup granulated sugar

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon dried orange peel

1/2 cup unsalted butter, frozen

1/2 cup heavy cream or whole milk

One large egg

1 teaspoon orange extract

One cup yellow dates, cut into small pieces

Whisk the dry ingredients together.

Grate the frozen butter into the dry ingredients and mix into pea-sized crumbs.

Whisk together the egg, the cream or milk, and the extract. Pour this over the dry ingredients, followed by the dates. Mix until moist.

Scrape the dough onto a piece of parchment on the counter that has been lightly floured. Flour your hands as well. Mix lightly until it holds together and tap the dough into a circle. Slice the circle into wedges, the size you want to serve.

At this point, you can brush the scones with more cream and sprinkle them with sugar. Transfer the parchment to a plate and freeze them for at least 15 minutes. Move the scones to a baking sheet covered with a clean parchment sheet.

Bake the scones for 22 to 25 minutes until lightly browned.

USA Today bestselling author Lucy Burdette writes the Key West food critic mystery series including A POISONOUS PALATE and A CLUE IN THE CRUMBS. Join her mailing list right here.

Book 15 in the Key West series, THE MANGO MURDERS, is in bookstores now!

The trade paperback edition of A POISONOUS PALATE is out now! 

And the trade paperback edition of A CLUE IN THE CRUMBS is out now!

Pecan Scones for SCONE COLD @MaddieDayAuthor #giveaway

MADDIE DAY here, delighted to bring you another of the recipes from Scone Cold Dead. And, since it releases in a couple of weeks, on April 1 (no fooling!), it makes perfect sense to present these sweet, delicate, easy scones today.

This book is the 13th Country Store Mystery. Book #1, Flipped for Murder, released in October, 2017, so I guess I've been busy! I have so loved created my central core of characters: Robbie, Aunt Adele, Lou, Danna, and Corrine. Buck and Wanda and Don. And Abe, the very good man Robbie finally found and with whom she's having a baby in the new book. Southern Indiana is a special place to my heart, which made it even more sweet to set a series there.

Now, for this yummy recipe.

Pecan scones

I adapted this recipe from one I saw in the Boston Globe by Sally Pasley Vargas. It was a popular breakfast special in Robbie’s restaurant. No wonder - you won't even believe how good your kitchen smells as these scones are baking!

 

Ingredients

¼ cup granulated sugar

1½ tablespoons ground cinnamon

3 cups flour

¼ cup granulated sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon baking soda

¾ teaspoon salt

10 tablespoons (1 stick plus 2 tablespoons) cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes

1 egg

1 cup heavy cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 tablespoons melted butter

½ cup pecans, finely chopped

Extra flour (for rolling)

Extra heavy cream (for brushing)

2 tablespoons turbinado sugar or raw cane sugar (for sprinkling) - not shown in photo

 

Directions

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Mix 1/4 cup sugar and cinnamon and set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk the flour, 1/4 cup sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt to blend them. Add the butter cubes and toss to separate and coat them. With your fingers, pinch the butter cubes to flatten them.

In a small bowl, beat the egg, cream, and vanilla with a fork until blended. Pour it over the dough. Use a rubber spatula to mix them until it forms a shaggy dough. If there are dry crumbs in the bowl, add more cream, 1 teaspoon at a time.

Scrape the dough out onto a lightly floured counter. Press it together to form a cohesive dough. Roll it into a 10-inch square.

Brush the square with melted butter. Sprinkle it with the pecans and about 2 tablespoons of the cinnamon-sugar. With the rolling pin, lightly roll over the dough to press the pecans into it.

Fold the dough in half to form a rectangle. Position it so the short side of the rectangle is facing you. Flatten slightly with the rolling pin. Brush with more melted butter and sprinkle generously with more cinnamon-sugar. 

Fold the edge closest to you up to meet the top edge. You now have a square again. Roll the dough into an 8-inch square that is about 1-inch thick. Set it on the parchment-lined sheet. Freeze for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Using a bench scraper or a large chef's knife, make 2 evenly spaced cuts in both directions (4 cuts total) to form 9 squares.

Place the scones 1/2 inch apart on the baking sheet. Brush with cream and sprinkle with turbinado sugar. 

Bake for 22 to 25 minutes, or until the tops are golden brown. Cool for 5 minutes on the baking sheet. Transfer to a wire rack. 



Serve warm or at room temperature with coffee or tea.

Readers: What's your favorite scone recipe or the scone you wish you could eat? I'll send a commenter one of my new author jar openers!

🥮🥖🥠

Deadly Crush is out and available wherever books are sold.

Next out will be Scone Cold Dead on - no fooling - April 1! This is the thirteenth Country Store Mystery.

My most recent releases are Murder at the Rusty Anchor,

 A Case for the Ladies,

And Deep Fried Death, #12 in the Country Store Mysteries.

Check out all my writing.

We hope you'll visit Maddie and her Agatha Award-winning alter ego Edith Maxwell on our web site, sign up for our monthly newsletter, visit us on social media, and check our all our books and short stories.

Maddie Day (aka Edith Maxwell) is a talented amateur chef and holds a PhD in Linguistics from Indiana University. An Agatha Award-winning and bestselling author, she is a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America and also writes award-winning short crime fiction. She lives with her beau and sweet cat Martin north of Boston, where she’s currently working on her next mystery when she isn’t cooking up something delectable in the kitchen.

Carrot Cake Scones @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: Twice this spring I saw a recipe float by for carrot cake scones. I decided that Mother’s Day would be the perfect occasion to try them out. The recipe originally comes from Sarah Carey at King Arthur Flour, with some tweaks by me. Don’t be tempted to skip the frosting, as it makes them really delicious.

Ingredients

2/3 cup pecans

Two medium carrots

2 1/3 cups flour

2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder

Three-quarter teaspoon salt

Three-quarter teaspoon cinnamon

8 tablespoons unsalted butter, frozen

One large egg

1/2 cup sour cream

1/2 cup brown sugar

For the frosting:

4 ounces cream cheese, room temperature

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature

1/2 cup confectioners sugar

Pinch of salt.

Heavy cream or whole milk as needed

Preheat the oven to 400°. Toast the pecans on a baking sheet until turning golden, about six minutes. Let them cool and then chop by hand or grind in a food processor.

Peel the carrots and grate. This should give you about a cup and a quarter of grated carrots. I used several golden carrots leftover from my vegetable box.

Grate the frozen butter.

Whisk together the dry ingredients, including the flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Stir in the grated butter. Add the carrots and the pecans and stir gently.

Whisk together the egg, sour cream, and the sugar. Add the liquid mixture to the dry and mix gently until just incorporated.

Place the dough on a piece of parchment sprinkled with flour, and knead briefly. Divide into two discs and flatten them. Cut each disc into six pieces. Move the parchment to a baking sheet.

Bake for 20 to 22 minutes until the scones are just turning golden brown.

While the scones cool, beat the cream cheese with the butter. Beat in the confectioners’ sugar and a pinch of salt. Add milk or cream if needed to bring frosting to a spreadable consistency.

Spread each scone with frosting. These are delicious served right away, but I also tried freezing them (even with frosting!) Those were delicious as well.

Happy Mother’s Day to all mother figures!

Don’t forget to pre-order LUCY BURDETTE’S KITCHEN, Recipes and Stories from the Key West Food Critic mystery series...

Lucy Burdette writes the Key West food critic mystery series including USA Today bestselling and Florida book award winning A CLUE IN THE CRUMBS. You can order that wherever books are sold. 

If you’re all caught up, try Lucy’s first women’s fiction title, THE INGREDIENTS OF HAPPINESS.

Also follow Lucy on Facebook, and sign up for her mailing list right here. 

Gluten-Free Raisin Scones #Recipe by @LibbyKlein

  Libby Klein I love Afternoon Tea with a passion. My girlfriends and I started going to Afternoon Tea twice a year for our birthdays many years ago because our birthdays were really close together. That morphed into four times a year because we kept adding friends to the group. Then came the year that for whatever reason we decided that I would make the afternoon tea. And when I say "we decided," I mean "they decided." I've had a long history of being volunteered to bake things. My first tea party was so huge and so tasty... That genie would not go back into the bottle. Have you ever been to Afternoon Tea? Let me know in the comments.

Poppy hosts her first tea party in Beauty Expos Are Murder with a lot of the recipes I used at my first tea party. I've included the tea recipes in the back of the book.  I have many afternoon tea sandwich recipes that I love, but my favorite is the gold standard - cucumber and cream cheese. And if you have nothing else at a tea party, you have to have scones. With proper clotted cream, jam, and lemon curd. Here is my recipe for gluten-free scones, and here I've put raisins in them. You can serve them at your next fancy-do and no one will know they are gluten-free. 

Disclaimer - Read all your labels to make sure your ingredients are gluten-free. Gluten can be sneaky.

Gluten-Free Cream Tea Scones

 Serves 12

Ingredients:

3 cups Gluten Free Flour blend that contains xanthan gum or add 1 teaspoon of xanthan gum to the mix
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup sugar
8 Tablespoons Cold butter
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 ¼ cups heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup raisins, soaked in water and drained

Additional heavy cream, to brush on top of scones before baking

 

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment.

Into a food processor bowl, combine gluten-free flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Pulse until well combined.

Add cold butter by the tablespoon and pulse until combined.

Add the vanilla extract to the heavy cream. Pour in a little at a time while pulsing.

  

You should form a lovely cohesive dough. Not sticky, but no flour left in the bottom of the bowl either. Lightly dust your counter with gluten-free flour. Turn the dough out and let it rest for a minute.

Form the dough into a ball and flatten it with your hands. place your raisins over the top of the dough and knead them in. Form into a ball and flatten it with your hands again. Roll out to a thickness of about ¾ inch thick. Cut into rounds with a biscuit cutter.

Place rounds on a prepared baking sheet. Brush the tops with heavy cream.

Bake for 15 minutes and check for doneness. I usually cut that last ugly one I mashed together with the leftover dough in half to see if the middle is baked all the way. If they need a little more time, put the pan back in the oven for five minutes. If the tops are getting too brown, turn the oven down to 350 degrees for the last five minutes.

Remove from oven and let cool until you won’t burn your mouth. Serve warm and spread with Devonshire Cream and Jam or Lemon curd. Or all three. I’m not judging. 

 

Fans of Jana DeLeon and Joanne Fluke will love Libby Klein! Gluten-free baker Poppy McAllister is about to see the ugly side of beauty expos...

Easter weekend on the Jersey Shore is hopping. Poppy's Bed and Breakfast is busier than ever, but she needs to leave things in the hopefully capable hands of Aunt Ginny--and paws of Figaro the black smoke Persian. She's selling her paleo muffins and keto cookies at the Health and Beauty Expo in Cape May's Convention Hall. Normally sharing a booth with the love of her life would be a treat, but she's recently discovered secrets that throw her new romance into chaos.

But more secrets are about to be exposed at the expo. In his keynote address, prominent cosmetic surgeon Dr. Lance Rubin reveals his breakthrough anti-aging technology. Unfortunately, someone has one-upped him with a truly foolproof anti-aging formula: murder. With the plastic surgeon dead under his own UV mask, and bedlam reigning in the hall and back at the B&B, Poppy needs to follow a twisted trail marked by glowing footprints to unmask a killer...  See it here.

Libby Klein grew up in Cape May, NJ where she attended high school in the '80s. Her

classes revolved mostly around the Culinary sciences and Drama, with one brilliant semester in Poly-Sci that may have been an accident. She loves to drink coffee, bake gluten-free goodies, collect fluffy cats, and translate sarcasm for people who are too serious. She writes from her Northern Virginia office where she serves a very naughty black smoke Persian named Sir Figaro Newton. You can keep up with her shenanigans by signing up for her Mischief and Mayhem Newsletter on her website. www.LibbyKleinBooks.com/Newsletter/

Carrot, Apricot, Walnut, Ginger Scones

Do we need another scone recipe at Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen? Oh sure, why not? 

These scones were a substitution experiment that turned out to be superb. First we didn’t have enough carrots so I made up for the scant amount with dried apricots (we’d substituted carrots for something else in another dish the night before). Then we didn’t have pecans, so I used walnuts. The original recipe called for cinnamon candies. We’ve never had those, but always have crystalized ginger, so in that went. 

The results are well worth repeating—tender, warmly spicy, and richly flavored. 

Carrot, Apricot, Walnut, Ginger Scones

Ingredients

2/3 cup walnuts

3 small carrots (about 1 cup grated)

1/2 cup apricots, chopped

2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

2 1/4 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold; cut into pieces

2-3 Tablespoons crystalized ginger, chopped (next time I’ll 1/4 cup)

1 egg

1/2 cup heavy cream, cold; plus more for brushing on top

1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed

Coarse sugar for sprinkling (optional)

 

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 ℉. Spread walnuts on rimmed baking sheet. Bake until slightly toasted in appearance, shaking the pan occasionally, 6 to 8 minutes. Transfer to a cutting board, let cool, then chop.

Peel carrots and grate.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and powdered ginger.

Work butter into dry ingredients using a pastry blender until mixture is unevenly crumbly—it’s fine if some larger chunks of butter remain.

Add walnuts, carrots, apricots, and crystalized ginger to the bowl. Stir gently to mix.

In a medium bowl, whisk the egg, cream, and brown sugar until well-combined.

Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add the egg mixture. Use a flexible spatula or fork and mix until just combined (this ensures tender scones).

In the bowl or on a work surface use the spatula or your hands to fold the dough over on itself incorporate any dry floury patches.

Line the rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper (if you don’t have parchment, bake the scones directly on the ungreased baking sheet). Sprinkle a bit of flour on the parchment (or the ungreased baking sheet).

Transfer the dough to the sheet and divide it in half. Using floured hands, pat each piece into a 4” round about 1” thick. Place the pan in the freezer for 15 minutes (this firms up the dough for cleaner cuts).

Run a knife under cold water and slice each dough circle into 6 wedges. Separate the wedges to there’s at least 1” between them. Brush the top of the wedges with cream and sprinkle with coarse sugar.

Bake, rotating the pan halfway through, about 20 minutes, until scones are golden brown.

Enjoy warm or cool, with a favorite beverage, and a good book.

 

Special audio book deal on all books in the Highland Bookshop Mystery series, now through May 6, from Chirpbooks.com!

 

Look for Molly’s new series—the Haunted Shell Shop Mysteries—coming in July 2024!

Book 1: Come Shell or High Water

 

The Boston Globe says Molly MacRae writes “murder with a dose of drollery.” She’s the author of the award-winning, national bestselling Haunted Yarn Shop Mysteries and the Highland Bookshop Mysteries. As Margaret Welch, she writes books for Annie’s Fiction. Her short stories have appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and she’s a winner of the Sherwood Anderson Award for Short Fiction. Visit Molly on Facebook and Pinterest and connect with her on Twitter  or Instagram.