Happy Thanksgiving!
Here in Canada we are celebrating Thanksgiving Weekend. The weather is perfect with a deep blue sky above trees whose leaves have already changed to brilliant red, yellow and orange. This morning as I swept the lawn a flock of Canada Geese flew over, a quintessential autumn scene.
It has been a long a difficult week so I’m especially glad it is now Saturday. Of course there is never a dull moment around here 😊 At 930am, I was congratulating myself as Thomason and I set out on our morning walk since I had already cleaned up the garden and given Mandu her quarterly “cat bath”. After walking the neighbourhood streets for 40 minutes and stopping for a few items at the local organic grocer I thought I would treat myself to a chocolatine at the bakery so I carefully attached Thomason to the corner stop sign and went in. About 1 minute later I heard a commotion outside and just knew is must be Thomason. Dashing out I found he had snapped the thick leather handle of his leash and crashed into a young mother pushing a baby in a stroller. He is manically excited by anything that has wheels but how he managed to snap an inch wide strip of leather is a mystery. A young man had got hold of him so I rushed to make sure the lady and baby were ok. She was very nice about it and told me she totally realised that Thomason was an excited puppy and was in no way attacking them and fortunately no one was hurt but I was then left with the problem of how to walk home with no leash. The young man holding Thomason then offered to “frog march” Thomason home holding him by the harness so we set off in a small procession as he was with his wife and little girl. After getting home safely I discovered that the harness had scraped a patch of skin on Thomason’s chest so I’m not sure what we will do on his next walk. Although it is only 11am it seems as though this has been a VERY long morning 😊
The difficulties of the week cannot be shared on this platform and I earnestly hope they will not impact on the future of Day Camps but they are currently weighing heavily on my heart so I guess the best thing to do today is to BAKE and also to knit furiously on more Newfoundland Mittens 😊
The plan for the afternoon is to do a test run of a Cranberry Walnut Miche. If the recipe turns out well I’m going to bake several more to gift to friends for Christmas and because I will have the oven on it will be a good opportunity to run up a fresh batch of granola, a dozen cranberry orange scones, a pot of applesauce, some espresso chocolate chip cookies and oven fries for my own dinner. Hopefully all of that will take my mind off other issues 😊.
Meanwhile it is now almost lunchtime; although Steven is away in Edmonton and so we will not be enjoying our usual Saturday lunch fare. Since I still need to eat something and get started on the baking projects we had better close off with a recipe.
From now until Christmas fresh cranberries will be readily available around here, however you can certainly substitute frozen ones in this recipe. Keep them frozen when chopping them and adding to the dough, otherwise they will be too soft and spoil the texture of the scones.
Cranberry Orange Scones
- 2 cups flour
- ½ cup sugar
- 1 Tbsp. baking powder
- ½ tsp. salt
- 4 Tbsps. chilled butter, cut into small pieces
- 1 cup cranberries, coarsely chopped
- 1 Tbsp. grated orange zest
- 1 large egg
- 1 large egg, separated
- ¾ cup whipping cream
Preheat oven to 400º and line a large baking sheet with parchment. Place the flour, 1/3cup sugar, baking powder, salt and butter in a food processor and pulse until the mixture resembles large crumbs. Transfer to a mixing bowl and stir in the cranberries and orange zest. In a small bowl, whisk together the whole egg, egg yolk and cream. Add to the flour mixture and stir until just combined. Turn out onto a floured surface and gently knead a few times to draw the dough together. Pat out 1” thick and cut into desired shapes. Transfer to baking sheet and brush with reserved egg white. Sprinkle with the remaining sugar. Bake for 15-20 minutes and cool on rack before serving. Makes 8-10 scones.