True Blood Scones

Ever have one of those months?

Recently, I was dumped by my ex, in an email. Yes, an email. But that's just barely a blip on my radar now. My cat has fleas who think I'm delicious, which is also taking a back-burner. Mostly, it's that my friend is sick. He's been sick for a long time, but now, it's much worse. Somehow, a rumor began in the far-extension of his circle of acquaintances that he had passed away. The rumor spread like wildfire through the nasty brush that is Facebook, and last night, they posted Rest in Peace messages on his wall. Luckily (and I say luckily with more than a pinch of irony), he wasn't awake to see it. Of course some people who actually know and care about him heard the fake-news as well, so we had to let them know that it hadn't happened yet. Poor darlings.

http://shitstorm.2kdub1.org/wellmeaningfuckery.html

As you may know, Food = Love.

...So I make it when I have feelings. This scone recipe is based on a beautiful recipe from Smitten Kitchen.

Dry Ingredients

2 cups Whole Wheat Pastry Flour

2 Tbsp Wheat Gluten

1 Tbsp Sodium-Free Baking Powder

1/4 Cup Demerara Sugar

1/2 tsp Sea Salt

I keep very coarse sugar and salt around, to match my coarse nature and satiate my desire to have everything I do be as difficult as possible. So I threw those babies in my trusty yellow-plastic-smoothie-making-cup and gave them a few good whirls with my stick blender before adding them to the rest of the dry ingredients.

In the meantime, I took
1 hefty Cup Frozen Blueberries
from the freezer and left them out in a measuring cup. Also, I'm awesome, so I added
The Zest of One Lemon
and used the rest of the lemon to make a quick, stevia-sweetened lemonade. Which is lucky, because now I need a pickmeup, and that will do the trick.

But we'll get to catastrophe later. No need for too much foreshadowing, narrator. Don't over-engineer it.

The Cutting

6 Tbsp Cold, Unsalted Butter, cut into pieces

I don't have a pastry cutter, but I did have a hankering for scones, so I used two tools: a whisk and will power. I used these tools to combine the dry ingredients and butter until they looked like this:

The Mixing

Aforementioned Blueberries and Lemon Zest

(gave it a quick mixeroo, then...)

3/4 Cup Part-Skim Ricotta

1/3 Cup Low-fat Buttermilk

I mixed with a flexible spatula until nearly combined, thus:

At this point, I preheated the oven to 400. The original recipe says 425, but like every gas oven I have met, mine runs hot and wonky. Next, I kneaded the dough as lightly as I could to make an even consistency. It was purpley and smooth. All that was left was to transfer the dough to my clean, floured countertop, pat it into a square, and cut that square into other squares! My counter was prepped! My cookie sheet was sprayed! Mumford and Sons were singing to me through the speakers of this very laptop! My PG Tips was waiting patiently in the pantry!

The Carnage

So, I dropped the bowl. It shattered, somehow cutting a giant gash in my foot, which immediately began bleeding everywhere, like the most polite horror movie ever filmed.

I cleaned, I discarded, I cleaned, I disinfected, I sighed heavily. Do me a solid? If you ever make these scones, let me know how they turn out, ok? I'm going to eat leftover pizza and drink that lemonade now. Deuces.