White Chocolate Raspberry Scones: Recipe FAIL

When people blog about food, they're either telling you how good or not so good it is, or showing you how to make it. Not today.  Today, in honor of Halloween, I'm going to tell you a most terrifying tale about my attempt to stray from the map of a perfectly good scone recipe that ends in complete and utter failure.  Why keep reading when I've just told you the ending?  Because, silly, it's always about the journey.

I'm not the first blogger to show off her culinary catastrophes: my good friend at Simply E3 Design has a similar post.  But unlike Elizabeth and her still amazingly photogenic "failures," mine wasn't worthy to go on visual record.  Seriously-- you'll thank me later. 

I love white chocolate chip and raspberry scones.  White chocolate is so sweet that I like to pair it with more bitter (like espresso) or bland (plain scone dough) flavors. The same goes for raspberries. Anyway, thanks to my oh-so-talented-in-the-kitchen mother in law, I have a great recipe for cinnamon chip scones. No, really, if you don't like scones you will LOVE these and if you do like scones you will love ME for introducing you to them. The dough has a buttermilk base which makes it more moist (or... moister!) and the cinnamon chips are so sweet that they form a nice flavor balance (these scones are very Zen). Thus, I decided to use the dough base and experiment with white chocolate chips and raspberries.

And so, I gathered all my materials, cut the butter into the flour/sugar/soda/salt/powder mixture, and was about to add the buttermilk when... it poured out in lumps (shudder).  I don't know about you, but I think buttermilk is disgusting before it passes its expiration date-- it's even more rank when it's sour.  This was the first warning sign that these poor scones weren't meant to be.  However, I persevered and used the power of the Internet and Google to find a recipe with similar measurements but used 1 cup of milk and 1 egg instead of buttermilk. Success!  (or so I thought)

Once the flour had been ever so gently moistened, I dumped that blob of dough onto the floured part of the counter and kneaded my ass off.  And kneaded and floured and kneaded and floured (this dough was particularly sticky)... then divided that ball of dough in two, patted each ball (heads out of the gutter please!) into a 7 inch pie ready for the butter and sugar coating.  But wait... I forgot something important.  Oh that's right-- I completely forgot to add the WHITE CHOCOLATE and RASPBERRIES!  Shit.

At this point I should have retreated or perhaps experimented by adding the chips and making slots for raspberry jam (which I happen to have on hand at all times... in case of an emergency... you never know, stop judging me ok!)-- that would've made sense.  Instead, I dumped the dough back into the bowl, kneaded in the chips (the scones were still salvageable at this point), and added the defrosted raspberries-- that killed it. More like bloody murdered it.  There was no bouncing back-- the juice was too much, I didn't have the right proportions, and more importantly my hands and the counter were covered in flour and sticky dough.  For a moment I stood, surveying the scene, taking in the damage, trying desperately to find a way out of this.  Into the garbage the dough went.  

Which brings me back to you and this blog.  Once I did the dishes... again... for the FOURTH TIME TODAY (I really miss having a dishwasher)... all I could think of was expressing my sadness the best way I knew how: singing Disney songs (I'm rocking out to "Just Around the Riverbend" at this very moment) and writing.  Learn from me, dear friends.  Unless you know the science of baking and are a wizard in the kitchen (and I'm not talking Harry Potter), consult an expert before wasting time, money, and butter.  That shit ain't cheap ("So this is Love" is playing-- I sound awesome).

Otherwise you might find yourself crooning out a ballad from "Cinderella" and eating your feelings with some not-so-great Pepperidge Farm chocolate chip cookies kept in the pantry for emergencies.