Highfield Hall Cooks!: Zealously Zesty

To honor the St. Patrick's Day festivities without green food coloring or whiskey, I decided we'd make scones in the Kids Café this week. Of course scones originated in Scotland in the 1500s, but they're also a type of soda bread (a traditional Irish quick bread made using baking soda and most often, buttermilk) and quite frankly, I didn't think these kids would go for lamb stew and we didn't have time for corned beef and cabbage, which could have been hit or miss in the approval department too. Scones seemed like the perfect choice.

They were raring to go again this week, stepping up to the table and reading their little recipe books to find out what we were making. Some yelled out that they "loooooooooooooooove scones!" and others had never had one before. I was still smarting from Friday's green tea debacle, so in an effort to redeem myself I treated this class to some real frozen yogurt. (Look! A tuile!)

I let 12 cups of Stonyfield Farms whole milk plain yogurt drain overnight in cheesecloth, added some vanilla and a little sugar and put it in the machine to freeze before the kids started arriving on Sunday morning. At the end of the freeze I tossed in some chocolate chunks for good measure. The kids were stunned. Frozen yogurt at that hour of the day?! Some were so shocked that they started turning their friends in for eating it—I think they thought it was an ingredient for the scones! Lucky for me, this frozen treat was a success.

After that sweet interlude we got back to business, mixing the dough, adding some orange zest, and then kneading in the cranberries and walnuts.

Cranberries and walnuts are great together, and the aromatic oils in orange zest really made this a great-tasting scone. Buttermilk keeps it moist. And, of course the vanilla cream cheese butter we made didn't hurt the flavor at all. Just ask Will!