Fat Fridays...

This Fat Friday brings me the perfect chance to introduce you all to one of my favourite blogging ladies ~ Joy The Baker. I'm sure lots of you read her blog, possibly as addictively as I do, and for those that don't I urge you to go and take a look. She'll no doubt be featuring a lot in Fat Fridays as her recipes are, frankly, incredible.

This recipe is one I'd seen ages ago on her blog, but had to wait for reading week to get the chance to cook and photograph it properly. And man was it worth the wait. Never before has 'eaten straight from the oven' been taken so literally. There were tears of joy. And blisters.

Not convinced? I'll let the recipe do the talking!

Chocolate Orange Scones ~ inspired by Joy the Baker

INGREDIENTS

Preheat the oven to 425ºF//220ºC//GM 7

In a large mixing bowl sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder and baking soda. Grate in the orange zest [I used the zest of a whole orange] and marvel at it's prettiness...

...boodiful.

Next, cut the butter into cubes and rub into the flour mixture with your fingertips until it looks like breadcrumbs.

When your fingers feel just about ready to drop off, it's probably time to stop.

Beat together the milk and egg yolk and pour [all at once] into the dry mixture.

Stir the liquid into the dry ingredients to form a sticky dough.

Now for the best bit... IT'S CHOCOLATE TIME PEEPS. Chop it up into fairly decent sized chunks and mix into the dough.
[note this recipe calls for chunks, non of this feeble 'chocolate drops' nonsense thank you]

Now for some much needed kneading...ahem. The recipe calls for the dough to be turned out onto a floured surface and kneaded ''about 15 times''. I found the mixture way too sticky to even pick up so added a little flour to the mixture before turning it out and kneaded it lightly to stop it from clinging to the surface.

Then flatten the dough into a roughly rectangular shape and cut into 6 squares.

Et voila, scones at the ready!

Brush with a little extra milk if you want a nice golden crust [and, let's face it, who wouldn't] and pop onto the middle shelf of the oven for 12-15 minutes.

For baking this is a pretty high temperature so you might want to keep checking that there's no burnt edges...or worse.

When the cooking time's up they should look a little something like this...

... a little higgeldy piggeldy perhaps, but wonderfully golden and oozy. Like a big golden....oozy monster.

Yeah. I'm err, not sure what I mean either, but I think this pic just about sums it up...

Scary stuff. Though not quite terrifying enough to stop me eating it. Plus two. Oops!

There's quite a few ingredients in this one, and a fair amount of steps too, but we're not talking rocket science. More Greg Wallace than gastro-cuisine. So if you like Terry's Chocolate Orange, and your partial to a scone or three, make sure you give this one a try...and let me know how you get on!