Maple Scone Recipe

Here I am contradicting myself already. While I don't particularly feel that frosting should be eaten for breakfast, I must admit to harboring cravings for maple frosting. This stems from childhood, where I picked up the bad habit of eating maple doughnuts. Since entering a phase of restricted refined sugar intake in college and then seeing the light of moderation on the other side, I have discovered such doughnut attrocities to have become inedible to my sensitized system. I mean I can eat them, but then I suffer from a wicked sugar crash and a degree of nausea. This is probably good. The downside is that I still have maple frosting cravings.

Occassionally when I eat breakfast out, I come across maple glazed scones and I am momentarily blissful, having had my latent maple frosting cravings satisfied in a relatively harmless fashion. But when I wanted to make maple scones at home, I came upon the realization that the maple extract needed to whip up maple frosting is not an extract of natural origin. And for all the glories of maple syrup, I don't think the flavor is quite strong enough to make frosting from. And being the perennial hard @$$ that I am, I will not compromise and stoop to the level of purchasing artificial extracts, no matter how bad the cravings get.

And so I came to accept that I would forever be taunted by insatiable maple frosting cravings, until one day I stumbled upon this in the spice aisle:

So it was time to bake a batch of maple glazed scones. Imagine the excitement. For those of you who might want to duplicate my recipe, take your basic scone recipe and for every 2 cups of flour add 1/2 cup of oats, plus 1/2 tsp of cinnamon and 1/4 tsp of nutmeg. While you could probably add more of these ingredients, I didn't want to overshadow the maple frosting. For the frosting, mix 1 tsp of maple flavoring with a small splash of milk (or soy milk) and enough confectioner's sugar to reach a thick, but still drizzlable consistency. My advice is to always frost a scone lightly (therefore make the frosting as intense with flavor as possible).

As I was mixing up the frosting I noticed that the maple flavoring had a very strong "herbal" essence. I wasn't sure what it was exactly, but I imagined something like Angelica (an herb I know next to nothing about), but upon further research I believe it is more likely oil of fenugreek. The herbal smell did not settle with my stomach very well and I was afraid my maple creation would be inedible. Oh, contraire.

Now I've gone and eaten all my maple scones and I am currently experiencing withdrawl cravings.