Thursday, May 18, 2006

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.

4 Comments:

At May 19, 2006 6:26 AM, Blogger Farmgirl Susan said...

Yum! What a fun and delish read. I'm a little embarrassed (sconehead that I am) to admit that I've never seen/heard of maple glazed scones--or natural maple extract. But I love the taste of maple. I'm half afraid to try it, LOL. I definitely have to try adding some oats to my favorite scone recipe. That sounds great. Hmmmm. Cloudy and raining this morning. The oven just begs for something to be baked in it. ;)

 
At May 19, 2006 9:03 AM, Blogger Jade said...

I highly recommend scones with oats in them, especially on cool weather days. Sometimes I substitute (if I remember correctly) 1 cup of oats plus 1 1/2 cup of flour for the 2 cups of flour in my scone recipe and add 1 tsp of cinnamon and 1/4 tsp of nutmeg as well as raisins for oatmeal raisin scones. It's just a little easier to justify eating that for breakfast rather than oatmeal raisin cookies. :) I'm jealous of your cool weather, as I've been avoiding the kitchen lately in all the warm weather we've had.

 
At May 21, 2006 10:00 AM, Blogger Farmgirl Susan said...

Thanks so much! I will definitely try making some of these. Oh, our cool weather isn't lasting long. Friday was a record breaking high of 90F. Ack. I'm a cool weather girl. : )

 
At May 22, 2006 11:45 AM, Blogger Jade said...

Me too. I go out of commission on days over 85.

 

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