Peach ginger scones

After having apparently had a Hawaii theme to our last post, we have now packed up wholesale and moved to the islands.  At a farmers' market we went to recently, a vendor was selling locally-grown ginger.  While I didn't get any at the market (I waffled on it, and settled for the fresh ginger at Don Quijote), it did inspire me to try making one of the pastries I'd often get at a farmers' market out east: peach ginger scones.

I adapted a recipe from King Arthur Flour.  As you can imagine, Gold Medal flour works just fine.  I omitted the nutmeg they called for and used a bit of vanilla extract in place of the almond extract.  To get my ginger, I initially wanted chunks like the scones I'd had back east.  Unfortunately, I somehow never learned that ginger can be nigh impossible to cut.  For me, it was like the single time I tried to peel a butternut squash.  I ended up using a Microplane zester to grate something like 1 tablespoon of the ginger into the mix, but I must not have grated enough for it to be a really noticeable flavour in the finished product.

This recipe called for yogurt or sour cream and not something like buttermilk, which was fantastic since I always have Greek yogurt for breakfast.  I ended up using the 1/3 cup called for (I used Fage 2%), plus a bit of milk since the dough was mixing up exceptionally dry.

We could have done a lot better with the peaches we bought; these had been sort of dry and not very flavorful, though they had smelled great at the store.  I think that's more on us knowing when the ripest peaches might show up at the store or farmers' market.

To shape the scones, I used the "create a large disk and divide it like a pie" method (using a bench scraper to make the cuts before baking).  I had to bake these for a full 28 minutes before they got any kind of tan, rather than the 15-to-20-minute range called for in the recipe.  Fortunately, one of the recipe reviews had noted this sort of thing as well, so I didn't get too concerned as I'm usually pretty apt to do.

Perhaps it was because I hadn't actually split the scones apart that I had to bake them for so much longer?  Regardless, they didn't end up as doorstops, for which we can all be thankful.

Despite my changes and adaptations to the recipe, the scones turned out remarkably well; I may have consumed....a few....before Dom even got home that day.  These were not dry, dense, or rock-hard; they almost had a biscuit or shortcake consistency.  Unfortunately, because they were so moist, and because our apartment doesn't have air conditioning, the last scone from the batch went bad.  The solution, it would appear, would be to eat these quicker.  Or simply to wrap individual scones and freeze them until wanted.

Only one of [multiple] that were consumed on baking day.

When Dom saw the remaining [x]/8 of the disk when he got home, he asked if it was pineapple.  I had to admit it was made with a less-than-perfect peach, but next time, I might have to try using fresh pineapple chunks along with way more ginger!




Writeup background music: New Super Mario Bros. soundtrack.  We just picked up a copy of the game from a shop inside one of our local department stores.