Cookbook Club – Alice’s Tea Cup
February’s Cookbook Club was an afternoon tea party! We used Alice’s Tea Cup by Haley and Lauren Fox. I chose the Lemon Poppy Seed Scones. Go to my Cookbook Club site to see the snackable spread of scones, sandwiches and more at our adorable afternoon tea. For now – my dish!
I’ve never made scones before, so this was a great opportunity to try something new. Alice’s Tea Cup has a ton of different scone recipes that all sounded pretty tempting. But I am partial to lemon-flavored baked goods, so the Lemon Poppy Seed Scones won out.
I mixed together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Then added butter cut into half-inch pieces.
I worked the butter into the mixture with my hands. Once thoroughly incorporated, I added poppy seeds and lemon zest. Whenever I use lemons, I zest them and freeze the extra zest. Comes in handy for a recipe like this one which calls for lemon zest but no juice.
After mixing the poppy seeds and lemon zest in evenly, I made a well and poured buttermilk and vanilla into it. Well actually, did you know you can substitute buttermilk with a mixture of plain Greek yogurt and whole milk? Which is what I always do when a recipe calls for buttermilk, because I always have yogurt and milk on hand, whereas I never have buttermilk.
I combined until all of the dry mixture was wet. The recipe very specifically said “Do not knead!”, so I was very nervous about over-mixing. As soon as everything seemed wet, I put the dough on a floured cutting board and patted it into a rectangle. The recipe said to cut into wedges using a dough cutter and then gather the remaining dough to make into more scones, but I couldn’t figure out what the heck that meant. I just cut the dough into triangles. I also used a regular old knife as I don’t own a dough cutter. All of this seemed to be fine.
At this point I was supposed to transfer the scones to a baking sheet, coat with a topping of cream and lemon zest, then sprinkle with sugar. However, I have to admit that I was so excited about my new adventure in scone-making that as soon as I transferred the scones to the baking sheet, I popped them in the oven. More than halfway through the baking, I realized that the topping was meant to go on before baking, not after. I pulled the scones out of the oven, topped them and put them back in, pretty much holding my breath and fretting for the remainder of the cooking time.
They seemed to survive this perfectly intact. No one at the Cookbook Club tea party even noticed anything seemed wrong. When I told them I’d actually messed up with the topping, one of the professional chefs in the group said that she often adds the topping after some bake time. So not a fatal error, and I thought they were pretty yummy! Though I’d like to try again with the topping on before the baking, to see if there’s a noticeable difference.
