Apple Gruyere Date Scones

Way back in the mists of time, before my blog even existed, my daughter JDE came home for a summer break during college toting a copy of Dorie Greenspan's book, Baking: From My Home to Yours, a dazzling book, filled with a mind-boggling array of enticing baked goods. The question:

Where to start?

With Apple Cheddar Scones, of course!  At any rate, that's where we started, back in the summer of 2008.  That was the first recipe we baked from Dorie's book, although it was more my daughter doing the baking and me rounding up the ingredients and equipment.  Neither one of us was all that impressed with the scones, (but the next couple of recipes, World Peace Cookies and the Perfect Party Cake were runaway hits).

We didn't photograph those early scones (no blog yet!) but a few weeks later I joined Tuesdays With Dorie and began baking weekly from Dorie's book, photographing the baked goods and posting them on Tuesdays.

As it happened, the TWD bakers had actually baked those same  scones just before I joined, possibly even the same week we baked them in my kitchen.  Now that I'm catching up with all of the recipes that were chosen before I joined the group, I needed to bake those scones again - to properly document them - and it only seems fitting that that first recipe should end up being the LAST RECIPE THAT I POST FROM THE BOOK!  Yep, that's right.  I've baked every single recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours and today, four years after the week that I posted my first TWD recipe, I've baked my FINAL recipe from the book.  


n.o.e.'s notes:

-  You can find the recipe on the scones post of the original TWD host, The Floured Apron, or you can buy the book and have this and all of the other delicious baking recipes at your fingertips!

-  I cut the recipe to 1/4, and baked the dough as a disk in a small pie pan.  I ended up with 4 petite scones.

-  I grated the butter, which made adding it to the flour mixture a snap.

-  When we made the scones the first time we stuck right with the recipe, but this time I changed it up a bit to see if I would enjoy the end result a bit more.  I substituted gruyere for the cheddar and some nice soft dates (which I chopped finely) for the dried apples.  I kept the apple flavor by using concentrated boiled cider for the recipe's liquid.

the verdict:

The sweet taste of the dates combined well with the sharp bite of the gruyere in these scones.  If I were to make them again, I'd add some nuts (probably pecans) for texture and maybe some herbs (probably thyme or sage) to complement the other flavors.

I might be finished with individual recipe posts from Baking: From My Home to Yours, but I plan to put together some wrap-up posts of my experience with TWD and my very favorite of Dorie's recipes.  Watch this space!