Baking in the Afternoon

2021-02-08

It has been almost a week since I've baked anything but today we did some lazy baking, some afternoon snack baking and some future baking. First I leafed through one of my bread machine recipe books for something that sounded good and an apple chunk bread that I have not tried before caught my eye (this is the lazy baking). So we got everything dumped in and started the bread machine first before we started on the batter for some orange cranberry scones. These scones are one of my favorite recipes because they are pretty easy to make, taste delicious and can be frozen before they are baked so you can just put them in the oven straight from the freezer when you want scones with no effort (this is the future baking). I always make sure I have enough ingredients to make a double batch of these so I can freeze a bunch of them for easy breakfasts. The afternoon snack baking was because we snagged 6 or 7 scones from the big batch to be frozen and popped them in the toaster oven as a treat for our hard work.

I'm happy to report that the apple chunk bread turned out well and was a nice little bedtime snack. We'll probably eat the rest of it in the morning. I am including the scone recipe below for your convenience so you don't even have to leave gemini if you want to try them yourself. The recipe is from a great recipe website that I love called Budget Bytes so I recommend checking out the link to it below the recipe and exploring. Lots of good stuff there.

Cranberry Orange Scones

Ingredients:

1 small orange

1.25 cups all-purpose flour (plus some for dusting)

3/4 cup powdered sugar, divided

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/3 cup dried cranberries

1 cup heavy whipping cream

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 400ºF. Use a zester or small-holed cheese grater to zest the orange, then squeeze the juice into a small bowl. Set the zest and juice aside.

2. In a large bowl, stir together the flour, 1/4 cup of the powdered sugar, baking powder, salt, and dried cranberries.

3. Stir 1/2 tsp of the orange zest and the vanilla extract into the heavy whipping cream. Pour the cream mixture into the bowl of dry ingredients and stir them together until a sticky ball of dough forms.

4. Generously dust a clean work surface with flour, then scrape the dough out of the bowl onto the work surface. Divide the dough into three pieces and shape each piece into a disc, about 3-inches in diameter and about 1/2-inch thick. Cut each disc into six wedges.

5. Place the cut scones onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake the scones for 15 minutes, or just until they begin to turn slightly golden brown on the edges. Allow the scones to cool completely after baking.

6. While the scones are baking or cooling, stir together the remaining 1/2 cup powdered sugar with 1 Tbsp of the orange juice (or just enough to make a thick glaze) and another pinch of orange zest.

7. When the scones are completely cool, drizzle the orange glaze over top and serve.

Budget Bytes Cranberry Orange Scones Recipe

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