The Raspberry White Chocolate Sconcoction: How Does Chocolate Lose?

   Well, the results are in and the most surprising thing of note is not that I lost, but that chocolate lost.  I mean, really?  Who doesn’t love a bit o’ chocolate in their scone?  Or anything, for that matter – I’m still coming to terms with the idea of chocolate covered bacon, but I know chocolate is a for sure winner.

The Raspberry White Chocolate Sconcoction was supposed to be a winner.  Just sayin’.

Even if it didn’t win, it is by far the best scone I’ve ever made.  Mostly because it was my first attempt at a scone.  I mean, who has the time to learn how to make a scone?  (Apparently us, somehow.)  A few observations about my first scone-making experience:

• It’s hard to get the right consistency with fruit, especially fruit that breaks when you mix it
• The waffle iron is much faster and easier than the oven
• Chocolate chips are harder to mix by hand in scone batter than chocolate chunks

Austin and I had never made scones before, so to prepare for the challenge we asked some friends to come over with their awesome kid and do a little tea party.  Jason, Carly, and Ella tried both of our waffle-scones hot off the iron.  I was easily the winner, with all votes in my favor.  My notes were to find a way to better distribute the berries and chocolate through the scones, which was actually really hard.  Every time I put any pressure on the berries, the burst and leak their tasty juices all over the counter.  Plus, it looks like something out of Dexter – me up to my forearms mixing a big ball of dough the same color as my pasty arms, oozing red juice and seeds.  We’ll just say it was a gory, gory, gory process.

I’ll give you the recipe below.  A note of warning:  I cook and bake like I sew and knit.  What that means is that I use the directions and recipe as a guide and let my attention span and instincts guide the specifics.  While I’m not very good at paying strict attention to recipes, though, I tried to stay fairly close to this one.  The below recipe is as close as I can come to describing the my process:

Approximate time: 30 minutes

Necessary ingredients:

• a little more than 2 cups flour (slightly heaping)
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 fairly accurate teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons cold butter (cut into table spoons, then cut into quarters)
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 cup half and half (I couldn’t justify cream and I didn’t have raw milk yet)
• less than 1 cup raspberries
• 1/2 cup-ish white chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Get out the waffle iron, but don’t plug it in until the scones are ready to bake.  You can start cleaning while it heats.
2. Mix together first four ingredients in large bowl with wire whisk until consistent. Sprinkle at least 2 tablespoon of this mixture over raspberries and gently mix. You’ll want to completely coat them if you don’t want to lose all their juices on the counter top.  I waited to coat them, though, until they were being mixed in so I could eat any berries that wouldn’t fit in the dough.
3. Use a knife to cut the butter into remaining flour mixture. In a small bowl, whisk together egg and half and half.
4. Make a divot in center of dry ingredients and pour in the egg mixture.  Stir until just combined, then flour your hands and gently fold the berries and chocolate into the flour mixture. Knead dough carefully on lightly floured surface. Be careful with the berries!  The gore show begins here.  Because of the juiciness of the berries, you made need to add flour.  The dough should be fairly consistent without being too sticky on the hands.
5. Heat the waffle iron.  Now you have a few minutes to start cleaning up while it heats.
6. Split the dough into two and make balls.  Place one a little behind the center of the waffle iron towards the hinge.  Put down (you’ll have to push it down) the lid and hold.  You may have to repeatedly re-compress the lid to get the entire waffle iron filled out with dough (and not end up three inches too thick!).
7. You’ll want to cook it a little longer than the light indicates – try a variety of times to find what best suits your waffle maker.

That’s it.  Enjoy warm, served with butter.

(original recipe/guide found at this link)

On a Waffle-Off scone related note:  I just got to taste Austin’s scones for the first time this morning, since he ate all of mine and his before I got home the day we were shipping them to competition.