Apricot Walnut Scones

I admit, I have never really been a scone person because they are often dry, crumbly, and packed with butter.  But when I found this recipe in my new issue of Bon Appetit magazine (i got a year's subscription as a gift from my fiance! yay!), i was surprised at the list of ingredients.

• flour
• sugar
• dried fruits
• walnuts
• cream

Oh.  No slabs of butter or lard?  Okay.  I can do that.  The only thing was that it called for heavy whipping cream, which i just cannot bring myself to purchase.  I literally had the carton in my shopping cart at the grocery store, then i took it out and put it back on the shelf.  So i tweaked the recipe and used skim milk instead.  (And every southern chef just shed a tear for me.  I'm over it.  Sorry 'bout it.)

Here it is!  I had to alter parts of the recipe to make up for the loss in fat, but what it ended up as was good enough for me.

Ingredients (about 10-12 scones):
-3 cups flour
-1/2 cup sugar
-1 tbsp baking powder
-1/2 cup chopped walnuts
-1/2 cup dried apricots, chopped
-1/2 cup golden raisins
-1 1/3 cups milk

1.  Combine flour, sugar, and baking powder.  Yes, you read it right.  1 tablespoon, not teaspoon. Whisk together.  Nothin' to see here.  No picture needed.

2.  Now comes the fun part.  You need half a cup of each of these.  Walnuts.

Apricot.

Golden raisins.

Add walnuts, apricot, and golden raisins into the flour mixture.  Mix.

3.  Slowly pour in the milk until it forms a thick dough.  When you dump it out onto the counter, it looks like this.

4.  Flour your surface, and knead dough a little bit till well mixed.

One of the extreme joys of making these scones was the texture of walnuts, apricots, and golden raisins when kneading the dough.  It just tickled the senses.  How lovely!

5.  Flatten to a 1" thick round.  Hehe.

Cut into triangles with a pizza cutter.  First i cut thick strips.

Then turned them into squares...

Then cut each of those into triangles...er...roughly.

Transfer them to a well-sprayed cookie sheet.

Even the ugly ones.  Oh gawsh that one's hideous.  It was the first one to be eaten.

Then dust some powder sugar on top of all of them.

Yes, yes, even the ugly one.  Hideous.

6.  Bake for 18 minutes on 400F.  They turn out like this!

Just because i happened to have bought some apricot preserves for my shortbread cookies, i ate a warm scone with apricot preserves on them :)

I love the inside of them.  The texture of the soft raisins, chewy apricot, and crunchy walnuts make it as much fun to eat as they were to make.

These make nice breakfasts with coffee, great snacks for on to go (they're less messy than a granola bar), and also nice to pass them around to friends.  I put two scones in a ziplock baggie for some friends of mine as study snacks.  They're actually not bad for you compared to normal scones. 

Mmm!  I liked waking up in the morning and realizing i had breakfast already made from last night.  Score!

P.S. Today's my birthday :)

For a printable version of this recipe, please click here.