Beautiful Fruit! And A Recipe

Doesn't this look delicious?  I was asked to make beverages for about 100 people for a special function at our church tonight.  Since they would be eating both sweet and savory finger foods, fruited water seemed like a good idea - and gorgeous too!  I made this for my daughter's wedding reception also - remember the Cookies and Milk reception?  No sweet drinks needed there at that party.  Since it was held in December, we used cranberries in place of the summer berries.  To this huge beverage dispenser of water and ice I added freshly cut lemons, limes, oranges, strawberries, blueberries, spearmint and banana mint.  No sugar, no soda, just fruit infused water.

We had a couple cups of strawberries left over so I was looking at instagram and someone posted a picture of Smitten Kitchen's recipe for Strawberry Cream Biscuits.  Since we are heading to New York City tomorrow for two days (more on that in a minute), and we needed to use those leftover berries before they went bad, I immediately jumped up and made those biscuits.  Demonstrating tremendous will power, we baked just one of them and put the rest unbaked into the freezer to harden like hockey pucks, then be sealed in plastic bags and back in the freezer for later baking and enjoying.  These are fabulous!  We ate the one warm with butter and decided that they would be incredible used as shortcakes with additional sweetened fresh strawberries and whipped cream for a summer dessert at our next dessert party.  Or even thawed, baked, and served for breakfast.  Make these now if you have fresh strawberries on hand because they are that good and quick and easy.  I found the method for making them a bit unusual.  Once you have cut your cold butter in to the dry ingredients, you stir in the berries to coat them and then add the cup of heavy cream, stir until it just comes together, turn out onto a floury surface and gentle knead it until you can pat it into a 3/4 thick circle for cutting.  The strawberries held their shape and neither smashed nor stained the dough. The recipe will be at the end of this post.

Yesterday we took the ancient wall oven from the Yellow House over to the Rye landfill/transfer station so I took a couple pictures of it because you don't see ovens like that anymore and it served both me and former owners well for about 50 years.  It's an old Fridgidare and the installation instructions were still stuck on the top of the oven hidden in the hearth all those years.

I loved those double doors!  When I bought the Yellow House, the face plate at the top was missing from the oven so I had a machinist friend fabricate a plain black one.  Good bye old girl!  (I thought of the oven as a she).

Tomorrow we are heading to NYC because Dan has business meetings so Tuesday while he is otherwise engaged, I plan on taking the train to the Bronx to visit the famous Wave Hill Gardens - a 28 acre garden that is said to be magnificent.  It might rain that day but I am going anyway.  I hope to have good enough weather to take sufficient pictures and I have wanted to visit this public garden ever since I watched a Martha Stewart Living episode over 20 years ago where she took viewers on a tour.  And of course I have a couple new bakeries to explore and who knows what else I'll discover.  !!!  Okay, now for the recipe:

STRAWBERRIES and CREAM SCONES

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen (I used a food processor for part of it; she does not).  If you want amounts in grams, do a search on her website for the recipe and she provides that.

2 1/4 cups flour
1 T baking powder
1/4 cup sugar 
1/2 tsp salt
6 T cold butter cut in pieces
1 cup chopped up very ripe fresh strawberries
1 cup heavy cream.

Put the dry ingredients in a food processor and pulse until combined.  Add the butter and pulse 15 short pulses.  Put this mix in a bowl and add the berries.  Stir with a rubber spatula scraper until the berries are coated with the dry stuff and mixed in a bit, add the heavy cream and gently stir until it is coming together.  Turn it out onto a floured surface and knead it a couple times gently - don't overwork the dough, just let it barely combine.  Pat into a circle 3/4 inch thick.  Cut into circles with a biscuit cutter about 2 1/2 inch size.  Don't reknead your dough, just push the scraps together in a circle shape and press them together firmly.  Sprinkle your circles with sugar and bake on a parchment or silpat lined cookie sheet and bake 425 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes.   Best eaten the day you bake them.

         Here is where I just pushed the scraps together and formed them in to circles.

Exquisite!