Gifts and Scones

Saturday brought another gift! This time from *Michele at Finch Rest.* I remembered that she had mentioned sending a book. The book, Blackberry Wine, arrived with a cute tea mug, a darling and delicious package of Brookside dark chocolate-covered blueberries, all sorts of tea samples, and a sweet bookmark with a tea pot charm. I was charmed, Michele. Thank you so much for thinking of me. 

If you have never visited Michele, you will love Finch Rest. She takes beautiful photos and gives wonderful tea parties. 

In honor of my gifts, I made Orange Blueberry Scones. John was in need of baked goods therapy on Saturday and he thought blueberry something would be nice. I wanted to use up some orange juice as I didn't have a lot of milk left so the result was my recipe inspired by *this recipe* from King Arthur Flour, but changed quite a bit. 

Orange Blueberry Scones
3 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour 4 teaspoons baking powder ½ teaspoon salt ½ cup sugar 1 stick butter (½ cup) 1 large egg 1 ½ teaspoon vanilla extract 1 cup orange juice ½ to 1 cup blueberries

Topping 3 to 4 tablespoons coarse white sugar (sparkling sugar)
Preheat the oven to 400°F. 
In a mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. 
Cut the butter into the dry ingredients using a pastry blender until butter is mostly incorporated.
Whisk together the egg, vanilla, and orange juice. Add this to the dry ingredients, stirring gently till everything is well moistened and just combined. Dough will be sticky.
Divide dough into two equal pieces. On a parchment-covered cookie sheet, pat first half of dough into an 8-inch circle, add cup of frozen, fresh or canned blueberries to the top. Add the remaining dough by dropping it on top of the blueberrries. Sprinkle with sugar.
Bake the scones in a preheated 400°F oven for 30 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown and a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove the pan from the oven, and sprinkle more sugar, if desired. After cooling 5 minutes, turn the scones out onto a rack, sugar side up. While they’re still warm, cut each round into wedge-shaped scones. (I had eight.)

(I used to hop through the hoops of providing a document for a printable recipe. This is a simple copy and paste, folks. I am giving up printable recipes for good. I hope that Vickie at Sand Flat Farm will find this scone recipe to her liking!)

Sunday evening brought more gifts. *Delicious bread from *King's Landing* and two Coffee Crisps. Oh yum! My son and his family were vacationing at the cottage in New Brunswick, Canada and they remembered us. So sweet of them!   
We had horrid thunderstorms last evening that rocked the entire house. We were told to expect hail the size of tennis balls. Yikes! That's why this picture of the bread and candy is so dark and the sky is such an angry color.

*Some of you may remember that I worked very hard to create a similar bread. You can find that recipe *here.*
Guess that's it for today! 




*P.S. In light of the daily news, a blogger could easily give up blogging about the inconsequential things of this life like candy bars, books, and scones. If you have not yet had the opportunity to read Brenda's Sunday Post titled For Such a Time as This at Coffee Tea Books and Me,  I assure you that there is much perspective and wisdom to be gained there.*