Tuesday, 12 February 2008

Chocolate and cherry scones


I've felt like making (and eating) scones for a while now, and by coincidence there was a really interesting recipe in a new book I have just bought. "The great book of chocolate" by David Lebovitz, the book is brilliant, I have found it really interesting as it contains far more than just a regular cookbook, although there are planty of great recipes, in fact more than half is about chocolate, from it's history to how it's made and even health benefits.
There are 30 recipes in the back and these scones are one of them.
I have had cherry scones before but never with chocolate in which I thought was a really good idea, the recipe also calls for orange zest which I didn't have so I used orange oil instead. (I recomend buying some citrus oils to keep in the cupboard for when you have no oranges or lemons in the house, they're just as good in my opinion).

The recipe is very easy to follow although this book is american and I did have to find out what cake flour was, apparently a good substitute can be made by mixing 7 parts plain to 1 part cornflour, this seemed to work well as my scones were the perfect texture, light, crumbly and buttery. The orange flavour comes through well, it is subtle but adds an extra and delicious dimension to the scones.
Overall these were a great success and I will definately make them again, judging by the speed they disappeared I'm guessing everyone liked them as much as I did!
I won't post the recipe here because I haven't changed it at all, but I'm sure you could work it out with a basic scone recipe, or even better buy the book!!

David lebovitz has an excellent food blog, probably the best on the internet which can be found here

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