teatime

These pear and chocolate scones came about because I drank a cup of Earl Grey tea the other afternoon and decided that my next cup of tea needed to be accompanied by scones. That, and, through a moment of marital miscommunication at Trader Joe’s last weekend, we ended up with two boxes of butter, two dozen eggs, and two containers of heavy cream, which neither of us realized until we were home and unloading the groceries. Fortunately, scones use heavy cream, eggs, and butter and even more fortunate still, it was a rainy and gloomy weekend, which made it perfect for scone experimentation.

I also bought pears, which are a somewhat ambivalent fruit for me. I like pears and I feel obligated to buy them in the fall. Unfortunately, I often forget that they are lurking in the fridge (though I recently read they shouldn’t be stored in the fridge at all), and end up with pear mush. This time of year, I see all the lovely pear recipes – pear galettes, pear tarts, fancy whole pears in cakes – and think, this will be the year I make something fancy with pears.

I don’t know that these scones exactly fit the bill of fanciness with pear. However, they are a good start in that direction and may inspire me to break out the rough puff pastry next week and cook up some pastry laden pears. In the meantime, these go really well with a cup of coffee, as well as with a cup of tea. They were fairly quick to put together, too, and can last a few days in an airtight container, so make a great morning-at-work snack.

(I didn’t mean to cut these as crazily as I did - I was aiming for mini-scones and went off the rails. My advice - make the cuts like you would for a pizza.)

Pear and Chocolate Scones
Serves 12

2 cups flour
¼ cup sugar
2 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup butter
½ cup heavy cream
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 pear, chopped into small pieces
½ cup dark chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Cut the butter into slices. Add the butter into the dry mixture and either use a pastry cutter or your hands to incorporate the butter until it forms pea size chunks. Add the heavy cream, egg and vanilla and gently incorporate until all the flour/butter mixture is wet and sticks together in a shaggy dough. Add the pear and chocolate chips and gently incorporate.

Turn the dough out onto a parchment lined baking sheet and form into a circle. Cut the dough into twelve pieces that radiate out from the middle of the circle. Gently separate each piece – you want just a bit of space between each scone so that they can rise.

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the tops of the scones are golden brown. Enjoy!