Scones

Scones

My husband loves scones, but per his restricted diet, I had to come up with a fool proof recipe that he would love and not feel restricted about eating more than one! This is a wonderful scone recipe. I use baking powder without aluminum or salt. Since my husband became allergic to dairy, he makes the recipe without using the buttermilk powder, but once the buttermilk is removed, the recipe no longer tastes like traditional scones. The scones need the buttermilk powder or the product is more cake-like.

Reduced-Fat Scones

4 cups flour
2 tablespoons baking powder (no aluminum, no salt)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons sugar plus additional sugar for the topping
2 tablespoons nonfat buttermilk powder
4 tablespoons canola oil
1 1/2 cups water and some extra milk or water for brushing the dough
1/2 teaspoon orange rind
1/2 cup dried fruit (raisins, dried cranberries, etc.)

Place the dried fruit in the 1 1/2 cups liquid to soak. Add the oil and orange rind creating a liquid mixture. Sift the first four (dry) ingredients, add the buttermilk powder, and the water mixture containing the dried fruit. Stir until just moistened, knead about 6 times, form into 9-13 balls (depending on the humidity the dough may be sticky, so wet hands to form the balls), and brush with milk (or water) and sprinkle on some sugar. Bake at 400 F. for about 15-18 minutes or until tops are lightly browned. I brush the tops with water or milk and roll each ball in sugar.

As luck would have it, in addition to being restricted on fats, my husband became dairy intolerant, thus, below is the current recipe he uses. The recipe substitutes applesauce for some of the fat, reducing the oil to one tablespoon. I have made the recipe without oil, omitting the one tablespoon of oil, but the product was not as good as with one tablespoon of oil.

The recipe below, for lowest-fat scones, results in a product something like scones, but so much has been modified that it might pass as a cake-like cookie!

Lowest-fat, Non-dairy, Scones


2 cups of unbleached flour
1 tablespoon baking powder (no aluminum, no salt)
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons honey
2 tablespoons applesauce
1 tablespoon oil (canola)
3/4 cup liquid (water or juice of choice)
1/2 cup raisins
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Put the raisins in the liquid and add the honey, oil, applesauce and vanilla. Sift the dry ingredients together including flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Dump the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients, mix, and knead about 5 times. Drop by spoonfuls onto the prepared cookie sheet (spray a cookie sheet and place the parchment paper on top of the cooking spray). Bake at 400 F. for about 8-12 minutes until the scones are lightly browned.