Rum-Glazed Cranberry Scones

It's time again for Secret Recipe Club reveal!  My secret blog assignment this month was Cupcake Muffin.  Sara was a graduate student at Berkley in California, but now she lives in Boston.  I hope she's surviving the winter they've been experiencing there.  That has to be a huge change from California!

Sara has all kinds of yummy looking recipes on her blog, so of course it was hard to choose.  She has not one, but two recent recipes for fish tacos that look really good.  Some others that caught my eye were:

• Creamy Chicken Enchiladas
• Southwestern Sweet Potato-Corn Soup
• Buffalo Sweet Potato Pizza
• Apple Cobbler Bars

 I settled on these scones because I just can't resist anything with cranberries.  And, I've never made scones before, so I thought now would be the perfect time.  The rum glaze didn't hurt either.

Rum-Glazed Cranberry Scones
adapted from Cupcake Muffin

Ingredients:

• 1 cup unbleached flour
• 1 cup white whole wheat flour
• 1 T baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup butter (1 stick), cut into small pieces
• 1-1/2 cups fresh (or frozen) cranberries
• 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
• Zest of one orange
• 1/3 cup milk

For the glaze:

• 2/3 cup powdered sugar
• 2 T dark rum
• 2 tsp vanilla

Directions:

1.  In the bowl of a food processor, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. Pulse a few times, and then add the butter. Pulse until the mixture looks like crumbs with a few larger pieces of butter.  Scrape into a large bowl.
2. In the food processor (no need to rinse), pulse the cranberries, brown sugar, and orange zest until lightly chopped.
3. Add the cranberries to the flour-butter mixture in the large bowl, and mix with a rubber spatula. Add the milk,  a little at a time, and stir until the dough just comes together (you may need to use your hands, but be careful not to over-mix the dough).
4. Cover your workspace with a piece of parchment (or flour it really well), and dump the dough onto it. Pat into a thick circle (about 1/2" thick), and cut into wedges, 12 or fewer depending on the size you want.
5. Transfer to baking sheet and bake 25-30 minutes at 400° F, until browned.  Remove from oven and let cool slightly. 
   Alternate method: transfer to freezer; place scones in sealed container when frozen.  When ready to bake, remove scones from freezer, heat oven to 400° F, brush with glaze, and bake.
6. Make the glaze by whisking the powdered sugar, rum, and vanilla together until smooth. Drizzle scones with the glaze and let sit until the surface of the glaze dries before serving.
   Alternate glaze:  Mix 1 T rum with 1 T powdered sugar. Before baking, brush tops of scones with glaze and sprinkle with some Turbinado sugar.

I followed Sara's recipe the first time I made these, except that I used twice as much powdered sugar in my glaze because it seemed really thin.  It could really go either way - double the powdered sugar or cut the rum and vanilla in half - and it would still be good.  We ended up with a lot of really tasty glaze all over our scones!

The scones were really good, soft on the inside and crunchy on the edges.  The cranberry and orange flavor is so good.  I liked the crunchiness so much that the next time I made them, I separated the wedges, and I raised the oven temperature to 400°.  Perfect!  They're still soft inside, but you get more crunchy edges.

I also read somewhere that freezing your scones for 30 minutes before baking will relax the gluten in the flour and make them flakier and more tender.  So, if 30 minutes is good, longer is OK, too right?  I made up a batch and transferred my parchment to the freezer instead of a baking dish and the oven.  I froze the scones and then put them into a sealed container in the freezer.  Then, whenever I wanted scones, all I had to do was take out however many I wanted to bake, let them sit on the counter while the oven was heating, brush them with a glaze of rum and powdered sugar, sprinkle with some turbinado sugar, and bake.  It's so handy to have scones in the freezer ready to bake at any time.  I will definitely be making these again and keeping some in the freezer so I can have them whenever I want!

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