I recently had my kitchen remodeled from a 1950’s nightmare (it was all in a delightful mint color – floors, cabinets, trim) to a lovely and highly functional modern kitchen; all this is to say that I now love spending time in the kitchen trying new things!
Recently I was at someone’s home who served a freshly baked Raspberry Galette from “The View from Great Island,” which is full of wonderful recipes. After making the galette for my parents, which was awesome, I decided to try the Strawberry scone recipe, as I have a new coffee grinder and french press, and well, scones seem to go along with good coffee!
This first batch of scones was terrific, and while you have to look closely at the picture to see the strawberries, it was full! I took half of them to my parent’s house, and three weeks later, my mother is still raving about the scones – and last night when I was there, she had all the ingredients out to try to make her own. The fact that mom does not cook but wants to make them should tell you how good they are!
With the success of the strawberry scones firmly cemented in everyone’s minds as a great success, I decided to try the recipe again, but with peaches, as they were now in season. I made them exactly the same way – added a bit more fruit and popped them into the oven just as soon as the fresh peach pie came out. Sadly, they did not rate the rave reviews of the strawberry only because they lacked the full flavor of the strawberry.
Determined to find a second recipe for great scones, I decided to try a recipe in the booklet for my new Ninja Professional Food processor. I could not find the recipe online to share with you, but it is very similar to the strawberry scones; however, this uses a bit less flour, and a quarter cup of sour cream, and a quarter cup of heavy cream in lieu of the milk. These scones are a wonderful foundation for something I have never made before – lemon curd!
I found the perfect lemon curd recipe from a blog called Julia’s Cuisine that was simple and easy! I decided to try this because I had about five lemons left over from another recipe I tried.
Here is what I can say about making lemon curd. Low heat and patience are the keys to making this – I made mine at a bit higher temp than I should have, and I chose not to use the double-boiler method, as I had read several comments that indicated it was unnecessary. What all this meant was that when cooking, the egg whites started to heat up into little lumps. I got a bit concerned when this happened and hit youtube, finding a video where someone from a cooking school was giving a tutorial on making curd who did not use the double boiler method – and she said, “no worries, just strain it!!! “which is what I did after it reached the desired thickness. The end result – perfection!!!! I will definitely be making this again – and the good news is that lemon curd can be frozen!
Our Different Kitchens 