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I make! Jam divot scones edition

I really thought I posted this before.  But I just went through nearly my entire posting history and did not see anything related to scones.  No idea what happened there.  Anyway, I’ve just decided to call these jam divot scones because you have a divot in the middle of the scone for the jam.  Or preserves.  What have you.

So, I’ve been trying to clean out my fridge again.  You know, as one does.  I actually seem to do this a lot.  But anyway, I came across 1823928732 jars of jam.  Or preserves.  What have you.

Normally, I would make filled shortbread cookies, but I didn’t really feel like making shortbread cookies.  It takes a long time since I have to dig out the cookie press.  I suppose I wouldn’t necessarily HAVE to dig out the cookie press, but I have one and I’m going to use it!  Or not.

Anyway, I didn’t want to make cookies but I still wanted to try and use up some jam and then I remembered scones and how people sometimes eat scones with jam.  And then I remembered that I saw a scone recipe on Joy of Baking that involves jam.  Or preserves.  What have you.  So I made some.

She calls them scones filled with preserves.  I call them jam divot scones.  Why?  Because…this.

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I didn’t make the center well large enough for the runnier jams (reduced sugar raspberry and strawberry).  The apricot preserves divot scones turned out ok.  But…my hobby might be baking volcanoes.  Because almost all of my cranberry galettes have turned out like volcanos.  I’m not sure if I’ve ever posted a photo of my volcano galettes.  I may be too lazy to look it up right now.  But volcano galettes aren’t all that bad because the resultant volcano spew is sweet and smoky and cranberry-y and quite delicious.

Oh, and the scones are good.  But I quite like buttermilk-based scones.  They’re a bit biscuit-like, but sweeter.  I ended up getting 12 2.5″ scones out of the dough even though she got 8.  I will probably make them again and use up the rest of the jams in the fridge.  And then on to the ones in the pantry.  WHYYYYYYY.

I make! Tiny chocolate cake edition

This actually is a second attempt at the Sam’s favorite chocolate cake from a previous post.  Just in a different form.

I really wanted to make tiny cakes recently.  Individual sized cakes.  Which is weird really, because I don’t often like to make indiv things.  I’m more of a giant pot of stuff type of person and everyone takes a portion.  But anyway, I wanted to make indiv cakes.

This time, I used Dutch process cocoa powder instead of natural to see if that would lighten up the texture of the cake.  I think it did a little, but not enough to my liking.  When I think of chocolate cake, I think of either really dense fudge cake (fudge is a really funny word), or a lighter devil’s food cake.  I subscribe to the idea that devil’s food is the chocolate equivalent of angel’s food cake, if that wasn’t apparent already.

The chocolate cake recipe that is allegedly Sam’s favorite isn’t really either of those textures.  It’s something in between and also kind of…rubbery?  Something about the texture just doesn’t quite do it for me.

Also, I prefer my chocolate cakes to have a really strong chocolate flavor with maybe some coffee background.  That’s easily corrected, but I thought I might mention that.

I baked the cake this time in a half sheet pan (and quarter sheet pan) because I certainly wasn’t going to bake 129837192837 cakes in tiny pans.  It makes much more sense to punch rounds (I think I used a 2.5″ diameter) out of a big sheet of cake than it does to bake 19287329813 tiny cakes.  That worked well enough.  Just remember to reduce the cooking time if your recipe is quoting for an 8″ or 9″ pan, since there’s so much more surface area when baking sheet cakes.

I decided on assembling three layer mini cakes because that was about the size I had imagined.  The filling layers were cherry preserves with some lemon juice and rind.  They were finished with a drizzle of soy milk ganache.  I thought about fully frosting it with whipped ganache, but decided I rather liked the “unfinished” look.  Also, I was lazy.

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And as a bonus, I got a lot of yogurt parfaits out of the leftover cake pieces.  I just tore the cakes into bite sized chunks and layered vanilla yogurt and raspberries on top.  Tada!

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