Two Scone Recipes

     Let me apologize again for not posting yesterday. I was very excited to share my absolute favorite chicken recipe with you, but after I made it and documented the whole process, I discovered that my memory card magically deleted not only those but about 100 of my pictures. I don't know what happened, but it seems to be working normally again today. So I will post that chicken recipe someday, but not anytime soon because I don't want to feed my family the same thing twice in one week. So today, we're moving on, and to make up for skipping a day, I'm giving you two scone recipes for the price of one. By now, it is well-known that I have issues with most types of boxed baking mix, and honestly, I think scone mix is one of the worst offenders. Not that it tastes bad or anything, but it's just overpriced flour, sugar, and baking powder. Making your own scone dough isn't that hard, and today I managed to do it pretty quickly first thing in the morning before I had anything to eat yet. These two recipes are really one basic mixture, just with different fruits added in, so I start out my making the dry mix, then divide it between two bowls before adding the fruit. These recipes make 8 scones in total, so you can either divide it and make 4 of each type or 8 of just one type.

INGREDIENTS:
Common ingredients for both variations:
2 cups flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons cold butter, cut into cubes
1/4 cup orange juice, divided
1/2 cup milk, divided
2 teaspoons plain Greek yogurt, divided

Mix-ins:

For cranberry-orange-rosemary scones:
1/3 cup dried cranberries
zest of 1/2 orange
1-2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary, depending on how much you like

For blueberry-apricot scones:
1/4 cup fresh blueberries
1/4 cup chopped dried apricots

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 425 and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
2. In a medium bowl, mix all of the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
3. Use a pastry cutter or two butter knives to cut the butter cubes into the dry ingredients until you get a pie-crust-like consistency with butter pieces the size of small peas. I realized I make a lot of recipes using a pastry cutter, but it might not be something most people have, although it's a very useful tool. It looks like this:

4. If you want to make both variations, put half of the dough mixture into another bowl now. If you're just making one type, just leave it.
5. Prepare the mix-ins and add them to the appropriate bowl(s).

6. Now mix in the orange juice, yogurt, and milk. For two different variations, divide each wet ingredient evenly between each bowl. The consistency will be quite sticky.

7. Generously flour a clean work surface and your hands and knead the dough just a few times until you can form it into a ball. Some of it will stick to you, but try not to waste any. Then, gently pat down the dough ball until it's a circle about 2 inches thick. Use a sharp knife to cut 4 even wedges of dough. You may have to add more flour if it's too sticky to work with.

8. If you made both variations, repeat step 7 for the other batch. If you only made one type, I still think it would be easier to divide the dough and cut 2 batches of 4 scones rather than making a giant circle and trying to cut 8 wedges.
9. Place the scones on the lined cookie sheet leaving them plenty of room and bake for 15 minutes.

Note: Alternatively, you could make drop scones by simple plopping tablespoons of dough onto the baking sheet. That way, you could skip the slightly tricky kneading and cutting stage, but I prefer the consistent shape of wedge scones. Drop scones may take less time to bake if you make them small.

Also: You could make some sort of glaze out of powdered sugar and milk, but I don't because I like to think of these as breakfast, not dessert.

So I hope you enjoy these, and remember to check back every day for another recipe!