Chocolate Chip Scones with Orange Zest

Scones!  I don't know if I have much of a story behind this post except for who doesn't love a good scone!?  They are not something I do all to often, but I will never turn a good one down....and when I bake them, I go all out!  I was craving scones one day, and also craving a chocolate/orange combination, so what I did do?  Put the two together, obviously!  Pretty easy - I just took a basic scone recipe I had on hand and made a couple small additions.  The outcome?  Definitely delicious and definitely craving satisfactory!

Chocolate Chip Scones with Orange Zestmakes 8 scones
1 and 3/4 c. flour
3 Tbs.+ sugar
2 and 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/3 c. cold butter, cut into 1/2 in. cubes
1 lrg. egg, beaten
1 tsp. vanilla
5 Tbs+ heavy whipping cream
1/2 c. bittersweet chocolate chips, chopped
1 Tbs. zest (about 1 lrg. navel orange, zested)

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.  In a medium bowl, mix together flour, 3 Tbs sugar, baking powder and salt.  Cut in the butter using a pastry blender (or by pulling 2 table knives in opposite directions if you don't have one), until the mixture resembles fine crumbs.  Stir in the egg, vanilla and 5Tbs cream.  The dough should be just barely moist throughout and pulled away from the sides of the bowl.  If mixture is not moist throughout, continue to add 1Tbs cream at a time, mixing to combine.  Lastly, mix in the chocolate chips and orange zest. 

Place the dough on a lightly floured surface; roll it in flour to coat.  Knead lightly 10 times and continue to lightly coat in flour as necessary.  Place dough on a cookie sheet and pat into an 8 in. circle.  Cut into 8 wedges (a pizza cutter works great for this) - don't separate.  Brush the tops to coat with additional whipping cream and sprinkle with sugar (preferrably with decorating sugar crystals or sugar in the raw if you have it).  Bake 14-16 mins.  Once done, remove them from the cookie sheet and seperate the wedges to cool.  Serve warm (and fun serving tip: buy a pint of whipping cream then whip the rest into your fave whipped cream recipe to serve along side the scones!)  Looking for a good whipped cream recipe?  Check out the one I used to serve with my pumpkin pie recipe.

And here they are!  Ok, so you may be looking at this pic (and others on my blog) and saying that looks weird.  It's due to both poor camera quality and super poor apartment lighting.  The lighting in our apartment is actually yellow.  But I promise they're legit.  I'm pretty sure I'm going to start digging out Brian's SLR to start taking better pics and look more profesh.