Maple Oat Nut Scones

I first had maple oat nut scones at Starbucks. I've been trying to recreate them ever since.  Maybe not exactly, but close enough.  In this blog I previously posted a similar recipe using an oatmeal scone mix from Victorian House Scones. This one is made from scratch and I liked it a lot.

A lot of scone recipes call for the oatmeal to be ground in a for processor but I like the rustic quality of the whole oats. Don't use the quick oats.

Maple Oat Nut Scones

1 1/2 cup flour, plus some for the counter

1 cup oatmeal 

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

6 Tablespoons butter

3/4 cup buttermilk

2 teaspoon maple flavoring or 1 of Mapleine

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat the oven to 425°.  Place a sheet of parchment on a baking pan. I use a Silpat.  

Place the stick of butter in the freezer for about 10 minutes while you get everything else set up.

Put the flour, oatmeal, sugar, salt, baking powder, and baking soda in a large mixing bowl. Give it a stir.

Grate the partially frozen butter over a piece of waxed paper.  Add the curls of butter to the flour mixture. Use a pastry cutter to blend the butter into the flour.  Add the maple flavoring into the buttermilk and stir to combine. 

Don't over mix or the scones will get tough.  You may even think it isn't mixed enough. Add the nuts and give another quick mix.

Sprinkle some flour on the very clean counter and dump contents of the bowl onto it.  Knead the dough about three times and then shape it into a flattened circle. 

Cut the dough into eight pieces and place on the prepared baking sheet.   

 

Bake for 12-15 minutes or until the scones start to brown on the edges.  cool on the sheet for about 2 minutes and then transfer to a cooling rack. 

These scones need a maple flavored icing on it. The recipe is on my other scone recipe, so I will be brief. 

1 Tablespoon butter

2 Tablespoons milk or cream

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

2 teaspoons maple flavoring, or 1 of Mapleine

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat.  Add the milk.  Heat until little bubbles form.

Add the sugar and cook until it starts to thicken.  Remove from the heat and add the flavoring.  If you use Mapleine it will be a darker color.  I like using it, but the store doesn't carry it here.

Mix well and then drizzle over the cooled scones.  

These are best the day you make them.  But they are also good the next day if you pop them in a toaster oven for a quick minute, and before the icing melts off.

Maple Bacon Scones

  

I was reading a book....well, I am pretty much ALWAYS reading a book...and they mentioned maple bacon scones.  Yum.  Baked goods and bacon?  What's not to like?

When we first moved here the plan was to buy a B&B.  We couldn't find any for sale in our price range that had land.  They were only in the cities.  We wanted land and some horses.  Now we have too much land and are trying to sell the horses.  Life takes some interesting twists, doesn't it?

Our realtor is a B&B realtor.  I think he gave up on us and helped us to buy this house out of desperation!  The idea all along was to someday turn this into a B&B.  We may do that after we finish the basement.  We may sell the whole place and get an apartment.  A studio apartment.  In London.  Depends on which day you ask me.

At any rate, Pete suggested we attend the Mid-Atlantic Innkeepers Conference he puts on every year.  It is not only for current innkeepers to gain new knowledge and to network, but it is for aspiring innkeepers to learn whether innkeeping is really what they want.  And if so, how to go about getting there.

We learned a lot, but one of the things I discovered was a vendor called Victorian House Scones.  There are always many vendors with lots of things for innkeepers, but FOOD ideas are the best.  Don't you agree?  Victorian House Scones makes scone mixes, oddly enough.  I have had a lot of scone recipes, but none are as fluffy as these.  There are many flavors and she sells to the public.  Check out her website if you want to try some of her product.  www.victorianhousescones.com  I like to play around with them.  One great thing about them, is you can make up a batch and freeze those you won't eat that day.  Then just pull out the ones you want for breakfast and about 25 minutes later you have a fresh baked scone!

I had one of her  Oatmeal scone mix and I frequently use it to make Maple Oat Nut scones.  It comes pretty close to the ones I love from Starbucks. I just add nuts and maple flavor to the mix.  Then I ice them with maple flavored icing.  Yum.  Don't trust me, ask the folk at the Fincastle Library!  That is my dumping ground...er donation point... for baked goods.
 
  

I took the Oatmeal mix and added in the butter and buttermilk.  I like to use a pastry blender to slice up the cold butter to blend into the mix.

  

Make sure you mix the Maple flavoring in with the buttermilk.  That is the only way to get in well blended.  I can't find Maple flavoring here, so I use Mapleine.

  
  

 

I microwaved up a whole box of precooked bacon and drained them on paper towels.  I just grabbed up the paper towel and crunched up all the bacon and stirred it in the scone mix.  I saved out two slices to crunch up and put on top of the icing.

Don't over mix. Dump out the mixture and form a large ball. You will maybe knead two or three times. That's it.  Flatten with your hand and cut into wedges.

 

 

  

 

The icing is just a little melted butter, about 1 Tablespoon melted in a sauce pan with 2 Tablespoons of milk.  Add about 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar and stir to mix.  Heat it until it is bubbling, remove from heat and add 1 teaspoon of Mapleine.  It will turn a nice brown color. 

Drizzle it over the scones.  Sometimes it is too thin.  Then I just add a bit more powdered sugar and heat it through.  Just cover up the thin icing and cover the rest of  the scones.  Put the bacon bits on top.  My icing got hard REALLY fast and I ended up smooshing the bacon bits to make them stick.  Gotta think up something better for the next batch!

Here is the critique part.  The scones were good, but there was not a huge bacon flavor.  I wonder if the next time, I should just cook up a batch of the original greasy bacon and use bacon grease along with the chopped up bacon bits.  It sounds great to me.  Or maybe place a slice of crispy bacon on top and then smother it with the icing.  I'm drooling just a bit here.  If you try that let me know how it is.  I'd love to know.