wednesdays are rough

Sometimes it's difficult to get through the day. Sometimes you feel like disappearing, like my teammate in the photo below (there was a person on that horse when I took that photo, I promise!).

Sometimes, you get home from work and all you want to do is get in bed. Other times, you want to make these wonderful scones first, because they are possibly even more comforting than crawling under the covers.

Today was one of those days for me. I first tasted a ginger scone at my university's bookstore cafe. It was delicious, but there was not enough ginger in my ginger scone. A ginger scone should have enough ginger to make it spicy and sweet and well, gingery.

I love ginger. My grandmother used to tell me not to use the word love for food. "You love your parents. You like that chocolate cake," she told me many times. In this case though, she was mistaken. I love ginger. I love fresh ginger and candied ginger and pickled ginger and powered ginger. Ginger cookies, ginger stir-fry, ginger tea, gingerbread.

These are my people:


I buy these whenever I go on a trip:

I love ginger, and one of the best forms of ginger is ginger scones. After that initial bookstore scone, I looked up a recipe so I could eat them all the time, which I do. The recipe below is adapted from Bon Appetit.

These scones make rough days one hundred times better. I love every step of the process involved in making them.

Ginger scones

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp grated lemon peel
11 Tbsp chilled unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
3/4 cup milk, soymilk, cream, or buttermilk
generous 2/3 cup diced crystallized ginger

Preheat oven to 400°F. Blend flour, sugar, baking powder and lemon peel. Add butter and use your hands to crumble the mixture until it resembles coarse meal. Make a well in the center; add 3/4 cup milk of choice (please note that if you're using milk or soymilk, you may need less than 3/4 cup, and slightly more than 3/4 cup if using buttermilk).

Stir until moist. Mix in ginger.
At this point, many scone recipes will tell you to knead and roll and shape and chill, but I prefer a less fussy approach. Simply shape the dough into scone-sized flattened spheres and transfer to a greased baking sheet, spacing at least 1 inch apart.

Bake scones until golden brown, about 15 minutes.