mickle

I've been pondering which book to use for this round of Novel Food. Nothing was really jumping out at me. I debated using Steering Toward Normal because there's fair food and thought that would be fun for a summer edition. It was a reluctant sort of debate though, and I was quite glad when I started to read the prepub copy of the book I am going to use.

The Kiss of Deception is the story of a runaway princess, warring principalities and rip roaring adventure. Lia has decided she does not want to follow through with the arranged marriage to the prince of another country and sneaks off to Terravin, a place she views as paradise. Little does she know, that prince has decided to try to find her and see what he can do to convince her to complete the alliance. She also has an assassin on her trail, and all converge at the same inn that Lia and her maid decided to call home.

They've arrived just in time for the annual festival, which is practiced throughout the land, so that means getting ready for extra visitors, lots of special food and several fun and somber events. Because Berdi, the inn's owner and operator, is in charge of the sweets for the festival, she sends the girls off to pick blackberries. And that's when I knew I needed to use this book for Novel Food.

We were to pick up Gwyneth on our way, and she'd show us the route to Devil's Canyon, where the blackberry brambles were thick. Berdi claimed the berries there were the sweetest. With the upcoming festival less than two weeks away, she was preparing to make blackberry scones, preserves, and flummery. (p 75)

The description of the fruit in the book confirmed my choice of this story: "The shaded northern slope of the canyon hung heavy with berry bushes, and their tufted purple fruit was the largest I had ever seen" (p 86). The past two summers we've had an average of 100 pints of blackberries from our bushes, and have been told they're huge.

This is from a couple summers ago.

So now, which recipe to feature? I gravitated immediately to the idea of scones, especially when I read the description of Berdi's. "Pauline stared longingly at the golden-crusted blackberry scones as they disappeared layer after layer into the basket" (163). So I did a bit of searching and found a promising recipe from the Big Sur Bakery (linked at the bottom of this post, though I used the book, which I also recommend).

There were a couple of unique things about this recipe, including how you deal with the dough. I've never formed a scone like this before, so it was an experience. I think I prefer the usual method, where you make a giant circle and then slice that into triangles, though this was a little less work.

Intriguing change in lighting when I zoomed in, eh?

Because this method was new, I had no idea what would happen once they baked. They spread quite a bit, and the berries weren't distributed like I would like... but they still tasted great! I used berries from last year that were in the freezer, which worked just fine.

I did cheat a little and if you're new to scone making, don't take the shortcuts I did. I didn't cube my butter, just cut it into tablespoon slabs. This makes it harder to cut in and will make you work the dough more than you should. I also didn't freeze all my ingredients before adding the buttermilk. Again, this is to keep your dough from getting too hot as you work it, so if you're new to the recipe, don't skip this step!

You can use any berry in these scones!

Book recommendation: The Kiss of Deception by Mary E. Pearson
Recipe recommendation: Blackberry Scones
Television recommendation: The Prisoner (2009)