Scones

I made four types of scones for the party: traditional, apricot-vanilla, cherry-vanilla, and cilantro-cheddar. The traditional scone recipe came from Baking Illustrated; the rest I kind of made up using the traditional recipe as a base. The scones turned out tasty, definitely an improvement over those hard, overly sweet "scones" featured in places like Starbucks. The cilantro scone did not bake well though. I suspect I added too much cheese.

If you are making scones, make sure the oven is super hot before you put them in there to bake. I baked mine at 425 for about 20 minutes since I froze the dough and baked them straight out of the freezer. Apparently the hot oven is necessary to create steam to make the scones rise up nice. I did not time the baking well at the party though. It takes about 20 minutes for my oven to heat up to 425 and I should have set the oven to preheat when the guests started to arrive, but I timed it late, so the scone course was delayed.

I think they froze OK (the scones were made about 3 weeks in advance). I cut the dough into circles using a biscuit cutter and froze the circles. I baked them straight from the freezer; there was no thawing. I just added on some time to the baking.