I
was feeling very Pride and Prejudice today; Jane Austen is after all my
favorite author. So I decided that I would write a new blog post that is
probably extremely random and add in a Jane Austen theme. First off, this is in
no way pertinent to anything in my previous posts nor is it anything like them.
I have two awesome recipes that I made this afternoon in an attempt to rid
myself of the desire to stick a flux-capacitor into our car and travel to
regency England… either that or wait for the Doctor, but neither of those events
ended up happening today so I’m glad I went with the recipes. I feel like Mr.
Darcy would approve of them.
The
first of them is an old one of mine; scones! They are amazing and perfect with
tea and/or hot chocolate. Here is the recipe:
Preheat
oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, it takes 15-20 minutes to cook these.
2
cups flour
¼
cup sugar
1
¼ tsp. baking powder
¼
tsp. baking soda
¼
tsp. salt
½
cup (1stick) butter (cold and cut into small pieces)
1
tsp. vanilla
1
cup buttermilk (substitute: 1 cup milk and 1 tbl. vinegar)
Mix
those dry ingredients up! Listening to the main theme of BBC’s Sherlock really
adds some English flavor to the situation, just to complete the overall theme
of the day. Add the butter; mix it with your hands till the butter resembles
small peas in the dry ingredients. In a separate bowl mix the buttermilk
(milk/vinegar) and the vanilla together. At this point you need to add some
amazingness for flavor. I usually add plenty of chocolate chips at the request
of my brothers and dried cherries for my mum and I. ((I have tried so many
different flavors in this recipe you can add extracts, fruit, candy, anything
you want really. Today I used raspberry extract (as well as the vanilla) and I
chopped up two half chocolate bars because we were out of chocolate chips. One
was mocha and one was cherry-chili. Talk about your combination of flavors.
They were delicious. I have also tried lemon-poppy seed, mint chocolate, and I
once used fresh raspberries.))
After
you add your amazing flavors, add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix it
with a spoon. The dough will be very wet, add more flour as necessary. After it
is all mixed together, spread a generous amount of flour onto a large cutting
board and put the dough in the center.
Kneed
it gently a few times till it is manageable, then take a rolling pin and roll
it out into a circular shape, mine is always an oval, but I try. Now take a
sharp knife and cut the circle straight down the center, then in slices like a
pie. It should make about 12-14 scones, put them on a cookie sheet and bake for
15-20 minutes.
Sorry
I didn’t take any pictures; I realized that I wanted to put this on my blog as
I was rolling them out. Oh well, I’m sure you can figure it out.
The
second recipe I tried was a delicious cup of hot coco. I got the recipe from
the Jane Austen Centere website:
The
recipe is found here:
It
tastes like liquefied hopes and dreams and makes you feel like you took a
bottle of Felix Felicis so you’ll probably look like Ronald Weasley after
taking that love potion:
These
two combined are perfect for snuggles on a blustery fall day or a bitter
winters night with your special someone. Don’t have a love interest at the
moment?
Just
kidding, curl up with some Jane Austen! Mr. Darcy, Captain Wentworth, Mr.
Ferrars, Colonel Brandon and Mr. Knightly await you!
I
took a picture of the two so you can see my masterpiece:
Sure
I served chocolate in a tea cup; if I had shared this with Mr. Darcy he would
have disapproved and looked at me like this:
Or
this:
Or
even this:
Don’t
mess with an Englishman’s cup of tea after all.
Well
that is all I have for today, enjoy your trip into regency England!
May
the peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and minds
in Jesus Christ. +JMJ+
