Vanity scones

Pie and ice cream? Focaccia and whipped butter? Chicken and mashed potatoes?

I dislike the word clotted and it almost ruins clotted cream for me. But not quite. I made scones this morning to serve with the clotted cream of the other day and it turns out I can get over clotted. So very delicious.

I made the scone recipe I've been working on for months. This was to be the last testing of this recipe for the book, a recipe that involves candied ginger, dried pears, whole wheat flour and heavy cream and makes a great and buttery scone, though I decided this morning that the dried pears need to go (not plump enough) and will be replaced by dried apricots. So I guess this wasn't my last testing of the recipe. And then I began doubting the whole enterprise. I'd wanted a scone recipe that was unique -- my very own! -- just like every other cooking person. But why? As I was eating my delicious vanity scone I started thinking maybe we've gone overboard with scone personalization here in the U.S. Because what I really craved with the clotted cream was a chalky white scone with currants -- a generic British scone -- and when was the last time I saw one of those?

And then my husband ate a scone and said, "Thanks for making these great muffins, honey."

But my scone is good. I'm not going to talk down my scone.

Clotted cream!

I wouldn't be me if I styled the photos.

If you were reading my blog a couple of years ago, you know I have tried to make clotted cream. I have tried repeatedly since then with equally dismal results.

Then, the other day, I saw a recipe in the brand new and very appealing One Block Feast by Margo True, an editor at Sunset. The recipe goes like this: Pour a pint of heavy cream into a pan and put it in the oven. Turn the oven to 175. Ignore the cream  and the oven for 12 hours. Take the cream out and turn off the oven. Cover the cream and put it in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning, you will peel off a thick layer  of the most incredible clotted cream I've ever eaten. I ended up with a cup and quarter, exactly what the recipe promised. I am beside myself with happiness.

Milk: There's a lesson in this

The scones were great, the clotted cream disgusting. It's all my fault because I got greedy.

I followed Anne Mendelson's recipe to the painstaking letter until the crucial last step. To make clotted cream, first you mix together cream and milk and let it sit for a day in a cool room. Then you heat it very slowly on the lowest possible flame of your stove. The cream gradually forms a beautiful, wrinkled, golden crust atop the milk and after four hours, during which time it must not boil, you put the whole pot in the refrigerator for at least eight more hours.

This morning, I carefully lifted off the crust, which is the clotted cream. It was lovely and buttery and smooth. I put it in a bowl. Then I noticed the milk below was filled with lumps. More cream! I carefully scooped those into the bowl on top of the cream. I actually thought: Anne Mendelson might have MENTIONED in her recipe that the milk is filled with lumps of cream. Silly lady.

I should have known better, because as far as I can tell, Mendelson is perfect. Finally, I tasted one of the clumps and it was flabby and grainy, like faintly sour, curdled milk. But by this time it had contaminated all the cream, which I could not retrieve, or even find, when I poked around in the bowl. I tried to eat it anyway, but ugh. 

Actually, it is a manic Monday

Busy, busy, busy today. Fortunately, clotted cream practically makes itself if you just let it sit around. First you let it sit around in a cool room, then on a burner turned very low for four hours, then in the refrigerator for eight.

Interesting fact from my utility company: To heat an ordinary electric oven costs 32 cents per hour. 

Shocking fact from my utility company: The average person spends $1.65 per month to use their gas stovetop. 

How can that be? So cheap. I ran a calculation based on the specifications of my particular stove and the price of energy in our area and it turns out that it really IS cheap. Though my math and logic are always questionable, it appears that it costs me 14 cents an hour to cook something at high heat (boiling pasta) and 9 cents an hour to melt butter. To make the clotted cream, therefore: 36 cents of gas. 

Back to work.