Cherry Chocolate Scones

It's Teacher Appreciation Week, and today we're supposed to bring in a yummy breakfast treat to share. I immediately thought of making morning buns, as they are the yummiest of morning treats. But they are also a lot of work, what with the folding and rolling and million layers of butter. Then I thought the next best thing would be cinnamon rolls. But I don't have time for yeast bread either. So I set out to find a tasty quick bread. I passed up several muffin recipes because they all contain nuts, which aren't allowed at school. I could have skipped the nuts, but they just wouldn't have been as good. Finally I settled on this cherry chocolate scone recipe. It's got tons of butter, so it tastes more like a buttery biscuit than anything, and is just to die for straight out of the oven.

Cindy's Cherry Chocolate Chip Scones, form Morning Food, by Fox & Bear

Ingredients:
1 egg
1.5 cups buttermilk (1.5 T lemon juice in measuring cup, add milk to 1.5 cups)
2 t almond extract
4 c flour
4 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1 t salt
1.5 cups (3 sticks) butter
1 c chopped dried cherries
1 c chocolate chips

Mix wet.

Combine dry, then cut in butter.

Add wet and stir until just combined. Then add in cherries and chocolate.

I found the dough a bit too wet to form into wedges at first, so I made drop scones. I did manage to make wedges for the last bit of dough.

Strawberry shortcake

Bread Pudding

I had some bread that needed eating, and I've been kind of craving bread pudding lately, so I decided to give it try. I wanted something custardy and rich, but I was also too lazy to go out and buy heavy cream. So I ended up with something in the middle. The bread I used is a part whole wheat, part oatmeal bread, which gave it a nice hearty flavor. I sprinkled in some chocolate chips - just enough so that R would eat it, but not so much that I would feel bad giving some to J too. 

Ingredients:

3 thick slices of bread, cubed

4 eggs

2 c milk

1/2 c sugar

1/4 t ground vanilla

1/2 t vanilla extract

handful of chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350. Put bread cubes in 8 inch square pan. Sprinkle with chocolate chips. Whisk remaining ingredients until well combined. Pour over bread cubes, making sure bread is completely saturated. Bake 45 minutes.

After pouring the custard into the pan, I decided I could squeeze more bread in, so I ended up using almost 4 slices of bread. In the end, I think it was a mistake, making the pudding too dry.