& by we, I mean me. unless you count the dog, who was mostly pissed I spent that amount of time in the kitchen & he didn't get a treat. & Nicole was home later to help with the tasting.
So my lovely & thoughtful friends Russ & Yort sent me jam for my birthday. Blueberry lavender & Cherry Cabernet from a place in Honor, MI called 'Food for Thought' . very good organic jam. I was looking for an interesting option to use them & always have bananas about the house. a little google search found banana-ginger scones & we were in business. The ginger is great for me as a flavour option to the perpetual presence of cinnamon in baked goods.
Not bad at all. it was a bit of an experiment for me. I don't bake much beyond brownies & really hadn't in this kitchen or in California so it was adjusting to the environment on several different levels. I found the liquid called for to not be enough & had to add another few tablespoons of milk to achieve dough. Another time I would make a couple adjustments. I may try the method where you freeze butter & then grate it or use pastry cutter as opposed to hand mix. I was concerned about overhandeling but don't think i had the right consistency. Also, I would cut the bananas smaller or maybe even mash. They'd contribute more moisture that way. I wasn't impressed with the 'chunks' but that just a personal preference.
As I also had some great organic blueberries & more fresh ginger, I found this
I'm much more pleased with the results. I really liked the yogurt egg combo to bind the dough. it worked great. as the recipe didn't call for an vanilla I used a mix of blueberry & vanilla yogurt. In the future I would probably just use vanilla as the fresh berries had plenty of flavour. The ginger was not terribly strong and I would maybe use a bit more of that but otherwise it was a great recipe.
My issue with lots of baked goods (muffins, scones & even pancakes) is they are too heavy. These rose well & were a nice light consistency. It turned out the blueberry jam on blueberry scones was probably overdoing it. they were great plain or would work with a little margarine or maybe cream cheese. I might try some lemon icing on them another time also.
Photo gallery here
