They're going to get all melty up there.
A scone shouldn't taste like dessert at all. A little sweet, but mostly a biscuit.
Has the weather changed in Texas to the point where baking wouldn't be insanely unpleasant?
This is going to be one of those US-vs-UK threads, isn't it?
It did on Sunday! It was amazing. Now it has changed back, but only in the 80s. One could bake (if one could bake).
No true scone has chocolate chips.
(I look forward to the comments from knife-crime island.)
Everything deserves chocolate chips.
I have definitely never had a scone that seemed like a dessert. That sounds sort of gross.
Jeez you all. Starbucks exists and has dessert-scones and they're not natural but they're loaded up with fat and sugar and coated with icing and they look delicious.
Not like a cake, but like a toaster strudel.
I've heard those scones go straight to the butt.
I keep being sure you've made this sound as unappetizing as possible, but then you take it to the next level. Are they filled with orange circus peanuts?
I've had real scones! And they are better and authentic and blah blah blah. I'm just saying the perverted dessert version is still tasty.
Or they've sometimes got a coating of sugar crystals.
I've heard tell you can cook eight or nine in the same oven.
19 is kind of gross. Probably just look at the link rather than clicking it.
Imagine there's no muffins
I wonder if you can
No scones or puffy bread rolls
No more poison bran
Imagine all the people, living life with kale!!!
HEY
You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.
I hope some day you'll eat cow fat, and the world will be awesome.
Sugar crystals isn't outside my experience as a scone topping. But icing is weird. I wonder why Starbucks calls those scones instead of... okay, I'm not sure what I'd call them. Cakes, but I wouldn't normally call things cakes unless they were, you know, layer cakes. Pastries, I guess.
Paleo makes sense when you're talking about living a cripplingly restricted diet, but when you talk about tasty treats, it falls apart.
I wonder why Starbucks calls those scones instead of...
Because they're triangular!
I have had scones with a glaze/icing sort of topping. They were maple-flavored and had some kind of nuts in them.
I like a lot of greens, but I just don't share the general kale love. Fully cooked braised kale is perfectly okay, though I'd probably rather have chard or turnip greens or something. But kale chips and kale salad both leave me cold.
Lots of things are triangular. Apple turnovers are triangular.
And I have nothing against individual pieces of cake -- I bow to none in my ability to shovel fatty sugary things down my gullet. I was just surprised at using the word 'scone' for them.
The coffeeshop across from my office has fruit scones that look like they'd be delightful, but they turn out to be soggy and gross. But their chocolate croissants make up for it.
I have had scones with a glaze/icing sort of topping.
At this point I don't even remember the last time I saw a scone that didn't have a glaze or icing or giant chunks of sugar on it.
I can't keep kale in the house. I'll just eat it all in one sitting. It's worse than alcohol or chocolate. I am probably anemic or something.
The texture is slightly more biscuity and crumbly than their cakes are, too, I think.
Let's see, is the thread made up of people acting as if the OP is unclear, by way of bemoaning how some atrocious mass-market places in the backward parts of America call things "scones" that are not really scones according to the age-old tradition of the word?
Yes it is!
So far am I from being snide about what real scones should be like, the only reason I didn't realize scones had turned into cake is that I mostly don't buy them because I'm not wild about what I think of as authentic scones either.
the only reason I didn't realize scones had turned into cake
They haven't. The texture is still way different than cake.
Right. They've just turned to dessert.
36 written before I saw 35, but works as a defensive response thereto.
But seriously, I have a sense of what a good old-style scone is supposed to taste like -- not my favorite thing, but basically a crumbly biscuit rather than the more layered kind. Maybe raisins or currants, a little bit sweet but not very.
What's a good new-style scone that Starbucks isn't delivering for you?
So, like a breadier coffee-cake, maybe? Firmer and breadier than cake, but at that level of sweet?
Now I really want some lily-white biscuits with butter and honey.
Less sweet than coffee cake, but with chocolate chips added.
Probably close-ish to original sweetness, actually, pre-icing/chocolate chips/etc. Because Starbucks and these places do also sell savory scones.
I like donuts. Assemble as many as possible in my friend's house and I'll eat them all on the bed while he watches Princess Mononoke and gets high.
Not moist like cake. It's hard to compare the sweetness of a heavy, bready sweet thing and a cakey thing that is made heavy and dense with more moisture.
This is probably the right thread to say good things about Mark Bittman's banana bread recipe. Nothing terribly exciting, but if you've got three overripe bananas around, reliable and tasty.
I think of scone/biscuit type things as getting stale really really fast -- like, once they're actually cold, they're getting stale immediately. Maybe that's what's wrong with the ones you've been buying: they've been sitting long enough that the scone itself is getting stale.
It would be terribly exciting if you put chocolate chips in it.
One could bake (if one could bake).
This looks tasty, simple, and like it could satisfy the desire for a treat.
Personally, I've been having good luck with my applesauce bread this fall. The two batches I've made so far have both been very tasty. I've pushed it in the direction of dessert by adding dried pluots and chunked dark chocolate -- which goes quite nicely with the fruit flavors..
I predict that the word "biscuit" might cause troubles here too.
That said, American-style biscuits are great. But, thanks to Alameida, they will now have secondary associations that I DID NOT WANT.
I think it's more that they were made not on the premises, knowing they had to last, so they were loaded up oil and other un-scone-like things.
Banana bread with chocolate chips is really good. I haven't made it lately, but it's delicious. That's the one thing where the tiny chocolate chips are better -- you want it kind of speckled with chocolate rather than with full-chip size lumps.
Speaking of Mark Bittman, they should not let him write full-length columns that are not about how to cook things.
Did he say something stupid about something?
That said, American-style biscuits are great.
They are! Fuck, now I want a biscuit.
Thought experiment.
American biscuits with chocolate chips. Yea or Nay?
IME all baked goods from Starbucks are awful - too sweet, too greasy, and with virtually no effort put towards their texture.
That said, I have no idea what Sifu is getting at in 9 and following - he seems to have confused the word "scone" with the word "sausage" or something. Scones are commonly made with dried and fresh fruit; is there some world in which the set of "pastry made with fruit" doesn't intersect with the set "dessert"? They tend to be less sweet in Britain, but there they tend to be served with rich cream; is that also not dessert-like?
Anyway, I've seen several scone recipes that declare the key to be freezing butter sticks and then shredding them, then freezing the shreds. All this to ensure that the butter doesn't melt into the dough during folding, rolling and cutting. And yeah, the texture is biscuit, rather than crumb.
I was just given a pie pumpkin and a few ears of late-season corn.
Nay for me too.
Odd that I can agree that scones are very close to biscuits. I can agree that scones with chocolate chips are not an impossibility (though I doubt I'd buy one). But, putting the chips in the biscuits—blech!
American biscuits with chocolate chips. Yea or Nay?
Bluuuugghhhhh.
Couple thoughts, from a blue-ribbon winning scone maker.
1. Scones are as easy as any quickbread could be. Kids love baking, and putting together cookies or muffins or scones (same level of difficulty) is worth a good 15 minutes of kid-occupation. I'd go to Smittenkitchen, pick any scone with buttermilk or cream, and make 'em.
2. I'm ambivalent about banana bread in general, but the last batch I made was with frozen bananas. That was especially good. If you're making banana bread anyway, try freezing the bananas first.
Scones are commonly made with dried and fresh fruit; is there some world in which the set of "pastry made with fruit" doesn't intersect with the set "dessert"? They tend to be less sweet in Britain, but there they tend to be served with rich cream; is that also not dessert-like?
But (old-style scones) are generally served as a freestanding snack, not as a post-meal dessert, and the general experience isn't particularly sweet. I understand that they resemble desserts in the ways you describe, but if someone brought out an old-style scone after a meal I would give them a slantendicular look, suspecting them of pulling a fast one on me.
American biscuits with chocolate chips. Yea or Nay?
Oh, god no.
freezing butter sticks and then shredding them, then freezing the shreds
If we're getting fancy now, my solution has been to grate the frozen butter with the large side of the cheese grater. Super quick, easier than using that pastry-handled thing. I generally keep flour in the freezer, but that's just 'cause I got moths one year.
46: I think I made that this summer and found it meh. But I can't find my reliable old recipe, alas.
OTOH, I've spent the last 4 or 5 falls trying to reproduce Whole Foods' pumpkin-chocolate chip muffin. I still haven't nailed it, but I do have a delicious recipe.
I adore American biscuits, but my production/consumption of them has dropped drastically under my reduced breakfast plan (since I tend to eat them with sausage gravy and a fried egg, there's no getting around them as a calorie bomb). I would not like one with chocolate chips, although shortcake with chocolate chips is fine, and shortcake is just a few spoonfuls of sugar away from a biscuit.
66.1: Yeah, that's what I meant.
66.2: I sometimes wish for another freezer just for flour and meal, for just that reason. Our actual freezer is always 80%+ full with ingredients and leftovers. During fruit pie season, the ice cream gets stored in the ice bin.
That's the one thing where the tiny chocolate chips are better -- you want it kind of speckled with chocolate rather than with full-chip size lumps.
Cook's Illustrated recommends grated dark chocolate for this reason. But I don't care much for their banana bread recipe either.
try freezing the bananas first.
This is an example of why my freezer has no room for flour.
We don't have need for it yet (although with the bottom shelf full of frozen tomatoes, things are getting tight), but when I move into a more co-housing-type situation, I dream of having a second freezer.
if someone brought out an old-style scone after a meal I would give them a slantendicular look, suspecting them of pulling a fast one on me.
Well sure. There's lots of things that I eat as a dessert that I wouldn't serve to guests. AB would never offer our guests nutella on wasa crispbread, but she sure as shit eats it after dinner, and I don't know how you could describe it other than "dessert".
I personally only ever make blueberry scones*, which I don't sweeten much at all, and wouldn't want except as breakfast, but if I were to make, say, a cranberry-ginger scone and top it with whipped cream or creme fraiche or sweetened sour cream, would that not be a delicious dessert? I might even offer it to a guest.
* with maybe 2 exceptions in 12 years; calling that "only"
The crumb on scones is larger and drier. It's nothing like a cake or muffin, even if it is covered in icing. Starbucks scones are just oil-laden mass-produced baked goods, but it's not like they accidentally made a cake and called it a scone. They're also giant, which is not good if one wants a pastry but doesn't want to commit to a pound of flour.
35: At least it's not bagels.
We actually do have a deep freezer in the basement, but A. it's full of meat* and various stocks, and B. I can't very well go to the basement every time I need flour.
* a friend buys a whole cow from a local farmer every year
59.2: because I'm a fucking moron, you mean?
Hmm, I like the combination of chocolate and banana, but I usually put a lot of sweet spices (cloves, allspice, cinnamon) in my banana bread. Would this still work?
Mm, a chest freezer, with rather a lot of it taken up by a box per month, so that when putting away the seasonal goodies one can distribute it among the months of lack. And the crown roast in December, because when else will you bother? Very sad, discovering stuff that was delicious and rare and has lingered in a freezer too long.
I now put reminders in my phone when storing goodies.
And, yes, I realize I could just experiment, but I so rarely have the right number of overripe bananas.
Starbucks has absolutely the worst desserts. Panera and ABP are way, way ahead for the same exorbitant prices.
There's lots of things that I eat as a dessert that I wouldn't serve to guests. AB would never offer our guests nutella on wasa crispbread, but she sure as shit eats it after dinner, and I don't know how you could describe it other than "dessert".
Okay, but by that definition anything perceptibly sweet is a dessert. If I walked into the kitchen after dinner and stuck a spoon in a jar of marmalade and ate a spoonful, boom, marmalade is a dessert.
ABP = Au Bon Pain? I find it slightly weird that the one with the French name is also the one with the most unpretentious menu and decor.
Eggplant, you could make mini-batches. Make a batter, put half of it in a smaller pan your regular way and the other half in a smaller pan with chocolate chips. Then you can do SCIENCE, with a hypothesis and empiricism and everything.
76: I think so. The aforementioned pumpkin muffins are heavily spiced. Although I've never had heavily spiced banana bread/muffins, so I"m not sure exactly what that profile would be - banana and pumpkin don't taste all that alike, so....
But I was hoping I could skip all that and you guys could tell me if I would like the results.
No, you wouldn't like it, Eggplant. Three flavors (fruit, spice, chocolate) is too many for a baked good to attempt. Any two of the three would be fine.
If I were going to worry about anything, it'd be the cloves. Cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg -- all of those I could see with chocolate. Cloves? It's not sounding right.
Knifecrimea is paralysed on this issue, for class-linked pronunciation reasons, viz
i. the posher way to say scone rhymes it with throne
ii. the even posher way to say it rhymes it with gone*
iii. so how -- to announce myself free from the taint of all posh -- am i going to say it? ans = I am not
*(ttaM and ajay pronounce it to rhyme with spoon, because the Black Guelph Empress Elizabeth Saxe-Coburg and Gotha of the House of Wettin stole it, and made it into some kind of sandstone cushion)
Okay, but by that definition anything perceptibly sweet is a dessert.
So wait, now you're arguing that chocolate and nuts combined with a grainy base totally explodes traditional notions of "dessert"?
Your marmalade example is confusing me (as it's more of a condiment than a food; it's not dessert the same way mayonnaise isn't lunch), but I'm not sure what you're trying to exclude from dessert. Chocolate-dipped strawberries? Peaches and cream? berries and cream over a biscuit? Dried fruit, nuts, and honey?
I'd say that you probably need fat + sugar, unless you have dark chocolate*. Is that definition too broad, or too narrow?
* there must be other exceptions. Chiding reference to cheese is hereby assumed.
Starbucks has absolutely the worst desserts. Panera and ABP are way, way ahead for the same exorbitant prices.Starbucks has absolutely the worst desserts. Panera and ABP are way, way ahead for the same exorbitant prices.
The few Panera desserts I'd had were so bad I never even tried any others, but someone brought their cinnamon roll/coffee cake (it was cut up, so I'm not sure what it was supposed to be) to some event, and it was pretty much delicious.
My kids refer to ABP as The Scone Cafe because my MIL will take them there for a treat, which is usually a cinnamon scone. Actually, my MIL and son are such regulars (and my MIL so extraordinarily and genuinely gregarious) that I once met one of the servers out on the town. Our kids were interacting or something at a park, then she spotted Kai and said, "Does his grandma take him to ABP?" and we had a nice chat.
Three flavors (fruit, spice, chocolate) is too many for a baked good to attempt.
I beg to differ. My applesauce bread has distinct flavors of (in approximate order of strength)
Apple
Chocolate
Ginger
Molasses
Other Fruit (plum, in this case)
Citrus (lemon or lime juice)
About half the time I make it the flavor isn't quite balanced and something is a little too strong. But the last two batches have both managed a nice balance across all the flavors.
[I realize you were offering a rule of thumb, rather than an absolute standard, but I feel like bragging anyway.]
i. the posher way to say scone rhymes it with throne
ii. the even posher way to say it rhymes it with gone
The American way to say it rhymes with "triscuit".
That's what those Dalriads get for nicking it from Ireland in the first place.
I'm not saying that it 'totally explodes' traditional notions of dessert, just that it's outside of the arbitrary boundaries I'd draw around that concept. Sure, it's similar to dessert -- fruit plus baked good. So's a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and that's not dessert either. I don't have a brightline conceptual rule that excludes either PB&Js or old-style scones from 'dessert', but neither seems like a dessert to me.
The only point of the marmalade example was that saying "I know someone who eats [X] after dinner and [X] is sweet so it's a dessert" doesn't seem to me to have any force.
I'm not saying that it 'totally explodes' traditional notions of dessert, just that it's outside of the arbitrary boundaries
"Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Dessert"
American biscuits are great with jam, jelly, or marmalade, you know. You don't need to have them with sausage n'at.
but neither seems like a dessert to me.
I sometimes have either applesauce or vanilla yogurt with crunchy breakfast cereal sprinkled on top as dessert.
Both are sweet enough that they count as dessert in my book, though neither would be an acceptable substitute if I was in the mood for something with more butter.
Both of those seem dessertier to me than a conventional scone. Vanilla yogurt is practically pudding, anyway.
The radical move is to resist dessert entirely. Free your mind, and these rules and distinctions will melt into the air. I had a steak and cooked vegetables for breakfast and look at me now.
The American way to say it rhymes with "triscuit".
I'm the one who said "Just grab 'em in the triscuit".
My mom lived in North Florida for about thirty years before learning that gravy can be white.
95.last: I take your point, but I mentioned it not because I think it's an edge case (as I say, chocolate+nuts+grain is echt dessert), but because it's nothing I'd ever serve to a guest, which was a standard you'd applied. Some desserts are too homely for company, but are dessert nonetheless.
American biscuits are great with jam, jelly, or marmalade, you know. You don't need to have them with sausage n'at.
I know, and that's what AB does with them. But what inspires me to bake them is the promise of biscuits with gravy. Sometimes I will have one fresh from the oven with jam and then douse the leftovers with gravy the next day, but that's the exception.
Dessert does not have a monopoly on sugary, tasty snacks. Plenty of breakfast foods are just as desserty as dessert foods, and sure, it'd be weird to serve them for dessert, just as it would be slightly strange to order a brownie with ice cream for breakfast. That doesn't mean that scones aren't as sugary a treat as a brownie.
35: At least it's not bagels.
The bagels thing is unforgivable. I'm scarred by that conference that claimed a bagel breakfast and offered four types of fruit bagels with fruit or plain cream cheese.
ms bill and I had some decent (at least by our uninformed standards) scones at tea at the Windsor Arms Hotel in Toronto a while back. No icing (on the scones).
104 gets it exactly right. The dessert distinction that JRoth is missing is whether it would seem like a normal thing to serve after a meal. (I don't care about that one time you ate that one thing after your meal. Would it be usual.)
I suppose I could lose the cloves. I mostly just through a heap of whatever sweet spices I have in there anyway.
I've used cloves and chocolate together before, but in a savory dish (chili).
104 does not get it exactly right, because scones are not "as sugary a treat as a brownie". This is true despite the facts that many sweet things are not desserts and many desserts are not terribly sweet.
They're delicious at Quacks Bakery when fresh, which means pretty early in the morning.
I heard that the general direness of Starbucks' baked "goods", if you can even CALL them that, more like baked bads, is the reason that Starbucks bought the "Boulange" chain of establishments out here.
I have two good scone recipes which I can send you, Heebie.
In an effort to curry favor with the woman you reprobates call Lunchy (who cooks all the time), recently I effected the manufacture, issuance and distribution of granola bars, to which I seem to have added too many chocolate chips. They are all crumbly. Nobody give me any trouble.
I thought the special seasonal Frosted Pumpkin Pop-Tarts were pretty decent.
Now that I've read the rest of the thread, I find 104 incomprehensible. Scones can be excellent with very little sugar, and plenty of things are exceedingly desserty while being only slightly sweet (red bean-based items, for example).
I think granola bars are genuinely difficult -- granola is easy, but making it hold together is tricky.
The trick to being a confident cook is to not announce up front what the dish is and onlyname when you see how it turns out. In this case, you say that you had always meant to make granola and declare victory.
re: 89
No, Scots generally use ii) for the bready-cake, and iii) for the mighty coronation stone/bit-of-pointless-rock/place.
Scones aren't very sweet (at all), but they are often served as carriers for really sweet stuff. Clotted cream and jam. The only variations on the basic scone I've ever seen are raisins [OK], or the cheese savoury version. All other adulteration is abomination! [Iain Paisley voice here]
60 to the wrong fucking thread.
Yes, I know, I was just trying to muddle the outlanders. Speaking of which, if wikipedia is not lying to me, Australians have a kind of deep-fried scone called the "puftaloon".
re: 124.1
Ah, carry on as you were.
"puftaloon"
Rhymes with throne, with don, or with spoon? I'll believe anything -- we're all gullible like that.
Speaking of food.
Today, I had to explain to a colleague what the word "kosher" meant. Someone from Israel had asked for a kosher meal at an event we are hosting. She had no idea at all what that meant. The entire concept was new to her. She'd never even heard the word before. This woman is in her mid-twenties, from coastal Florida, has a professional degree, and works in the DC area. I know that I shouldn't be boggled, but I am.
I bet she knows what a bagel is. One of those round things that are a bit like doughnuts and are not chewy at all.
My northeastern provincialism, let me show it to you.
While you're explaining that to her, you might as well throw in "halal".
No, start small, with the Old Testament ("It's in the front of the book").
121: Over the last couple of weeks, I watched all 4 episodes of this documentary about the Provos. I think it was BBC, but I don't know, could have been Granada or whatever. Anyhow, NOT ONCE in the entire 4 hour presentation covering the period 1969 to 1997, did they mention Ian Paisley. How the fuck do you leave him out? I understand the politics are complicated and all, but it's like discussing the history of race relations in the US without mentioning the Klan. Weird.
Ha ha. I did throw in an explanation of Halal. And it was a "since we're talking about this one, here's one that is similar."
My first reaction, unfortunately, was to say "Really?!" I immediately realized that she wasn't pulling my leg and I apologized. Her family is African-American Christian and I would have figured she'd have a passing familiarity with Jewish dietary restrictions. I thought that at least she'd be familiar with them from the mentions in the New Testament. Nope!
There was a sukkah in the Pentagon courtyard last week. She saw it and later asked about it. OK, that is obscure. But kashrut?!
I didn't really get what kosher meant, because I was weirdly slow to realize that Orthodox Jews existed, until maybe college. Like, I knew about my Conservative Jewish relatives, and thought they were extremely religious people, and I knew a few very irreligious Jews in our hometown. And I knew there was traditionally Jewish food, but I didn't get that kosher meant something more.
OK, heebie definitely makes me think I should work on being charitable.
I'm a little bit perplexed by the couple of Jewish people I know who seem to feel that it is a mark of honor not to get any references to A Christmas Story. I mean, yeah, I get it, you don't celebrate Christmas, but we're talking about a fairly widely distributed, even inescapable source of pop culture trivia.
I mean, we've got weird family-specific reasons that we never speak of the details Judaism - at most we just pretend it's a family specific weird thing we do - and I didn't get any Bible at the Unitarian Fellowship, and there sure weren't any particularly religious Jews in our town.
She had no idea at all what that meant
The opposite of 'trefne' i.e. the opposite suspect, not quite on the up and up, dubious, easily breakable - right? Not quite sure when I realized that that word had anything to do with religious law, but for some reason I figured out what kosher meant from Chaim Potok, but not 'tref'. I'm certain that most Poles have no idea of what that very common adjective comes from.
Some friends who delighted in letting their baby eat anything were joking about celebrating "baby's first treyf" at our house. (I think the offending item was some kind of shellfish dip.)
Chocolate chips in American biscuits would be a travesty. However, my mother often served biscuits for dessert, cut in half with a big pat of butter and two tablespoons of granulated sugar in the middle. And they were fucking delicious.
Of course, biscuits are served at pretty much every meal in my family, so serving the last of them as dessert only made sense. Leftover biscuits are terrible.
The only variations on the basic scone I've ever seen are raisins [OK]
Currants, too, surely?
And I do know about Sukkot but might have not placed it if I came across a sukkah. Sukkot is right there with unions and unicorns for things that I know about intellectually but have maybe witnessed once in my actual life.
We walked past some rollicking Sukkot festivities last night.
It was Simchat Torah. People were jumping up and down with Torah scrolls, and each Torah holder had people dancing in circles around her or him.
Thank God I'm an atheistnot Jewish. If I had any more social obligations this week I would freak out so severely.
Okay, for this thing to work, somebody else has actually got to comment occasionally.
Maybe if I had more social obligations this week I would have fewer plane flights.
Although my wanderings did give me a chance today to reenact the closest thing I have to a religious ritual, going to the Seminary Coop Bookstore's front section and choosing a quasi-random book on a topic I have no clue about (and also no clue about the book's quality).
that is an excellent tradition, essear. will you update our connectome with your new connectome?
that one time you ate that one thing after your meal
Are you suggesting that my wife has only slathered nutella on the nearest flat grain-based object once? Or that she is somehow alone in doing this?
Or is the standard for defining all foods Would you serve it to your guests at a formal meal? Because now chicken pot pie isn't dinner - unless you're some sort of prole, I suppose.
Further: if you think that I wouldn't serve a ginger-cranberry scone with heavy cream after dinner, you're living in a fool's paradise.
||
On facebook an acquaintance has just implied that you have to be a Marxist to apply the notion of contradiction to anything other than assertions.
|>
The dessert distinction that JRoth is missing is whether it would seem like a normal thing to serve after a meal
Like cheese?
Anyway, it's weird that, in a thread that's discussed chocolate-pumpklin muffins, chocolate-banana bread, and an apparently decadent applesauce cake, we're treating scones as an edge case between breakfast and dessert. The average sweet American muffin probably has more sugar than a brownie of comparable calorie count (but less chocolate).
OT: Romney reversed his position on abortion today? No restrictions? Did he just lose the base? My mother was really tortured about voting for him, but I don't think she'll show up now.
The weirdest part is that all of this insanely blatant flip-flopping actually seems to be working for him, at least so far.
90.last to 154.
Actually, maybe what people seem to want is to define "dessert" as "a food that could never serve as breakfast, lunch, or dinner (except for depressed shut-ins)". Therefore a chocolate brownie is dessert, while a chocolate chip muffin is not. A cake flavored with maple syrup is dessert, but pancakes topped with maple syrup is not.
But you still get edge cases: waffles with strawberries and whipped cream? We have it for breakfast all the time, but it's sold in (some) restaurants as dessert.
Anyway, what actually seems to be going on with Romney is that he's decided that laying the smackdown on Obama in the debate has given him such massive cred with the base that they're willing to let him do anything it takes to win. He might even be right.
I know it's frustrating, but I'm still hoping Obama is playing rope-a-dope. He did it during the 2008 primaries and during the election. But here he's betting that if he lets Romney have enough space and time, he will make a dick of himself. It might be true, and it might be impossible because the base has been staring at dicks too long.
the base has been staring at dicks too long
The porn thread's the other one.
Which is the making-things-explicit thread?
neb might be interested to hear that at the liquor store today I saw birch syrup vodka, made by this place (which has an annoyingly Flash-based website or I would link directly to the product).
That is interesting, but vodka strikes me as an odd thing to make out of what I presume to be an interesting and difficult-to-obtain ingredient.
Some place on the other side of the country makes a maple syrup vodka about which I feel unsurprisingly similarly.
They also make a smoked salmon vodka. They seem to specialize in gimmicks.
Presumably the smoked salmon vodka isn't distilled from salmon.
They do apparently make one that is distilled from hemp seeds, though.
But the rest appear to be infused with their titular ingredients rather than distilled from them.
Oh.
Much less interesting.
The maple syrup vodka is distilled from maple syrup.
That would indeed be a bizarre thing to do with birch syrup.
53: Agreed! I had a vision of where it would all end: he would just go and pee on some couple's meal at a restaurant and tell them officiously that his urine had improved the nutritional profile of their food. This may already have happened; I haven't kept up.
There are ridiculously, ridiculously good rosemary scones at a vegan cafe near downtown Berkeley BART. Like Bittman, I have been exiled from the world of dairy, but I think I would have flipped for these things even under ideal conditions.
Gratitude? I've never felt qualified to go.
Cafe Gratitude? Arson is too good for those cult-affiliated, employee-exploiting disgusting sons of bitches.
Oh my no. This place. The baked goods are better than the website.
I've never felt qualified to go.
One I Am Insecure coming right up!
p.s. I Am Offended! (Seitan on dinosaur kale with orange-ginger-balsamic reduction smeared with deer bile)
So, Ian Paisley walks into Starbucks in Belfast, points at a shiny white thing and asks, "Is that a scone or a meringue?"
"No Ian, you're right - it's a scone."
Heh. I've heard the same joke done in a Glasgow accent.
There was a sukkah in the Pentagon courtyard last week. She saw it and later asked about it
"If you're in a poker gamethe Pentagon and you can't spot the sukkah, you're the sukkah."
I would like a really great scone, please.
This question has already been resolved. You need to talk to my mum. Or, alternatively, ttaM's mum.
Aargh, tag failure. No wonder I didn't put my name on that comment.
183: That joke befuddled me until I imagined it being said in the voice of a former client from County Armagh.
Haven't read the thread yet, but go look at M/tch's recipe in AWB's recipe blog. They're ridiculously delicious, they're proper scones, and he made a batch on Monday, because he rocks.
What is the URL for the recipe blog again?
WTF? The phone ate my scone comment. Anyhoo, go look at M/tch's recipe in AWB's wiki. They're ridiculously delicious, they're proper scones, and he made a batch on Monday because he rocks.
What is the URL for the recipe blog again?
I made a Victoria sponge at the weekend. Beaucoup domestic points were won. Not made scones for years, though. Might be a project for this weekend.
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The federal Office of Personnel Management form that they send you after you do a security-clearance interview for a former employee is funny.
They're trying to assess their own process and see if their investigator was professional and courteous, which is fine.
But one of the questions is about whether you had to tell the investigator about any concerns you have about your former employee. "For example -- criminal conduct, illegal drug use, alcohol abuse, violent behavior, foreign travel."
One of these things is not like the others, guys.
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Real Americans don't even have a passport.
If you mean me, that was done as a favor to the Canadian government and, in retrospect, I can see their point.
Just because it's Canada, doesn't mean the elk ride for free.
So, what's 'it's a scone' supposed to sound like in the joke? I give up.
"a meringue" and "am I wrong" are homophones in very thickly accented English as spoken by my father and maybe in some backwater regional dialects as well.
For example -- criminal conduct, illegal drug use, alcohol abuse, violent behavior, foreign travel
aka "stag weekend".
I made scones on Saturday -- the SK apple-cheddar ones, so certain not to meet with trans-Atlantic approval. But they were really fucking good.
re: 201
The word 'wrong' is pronounced 'wrang' in some Scottish and some Northern Irish dialects. So, 'am I wrong' and 'a meringue' are, as lw says, homophones.
late, but 160:
re: muffins as breakfast food.
"muffins are for people who don't have the balls to order cake for breakfast" --only decent line from a forgettable show
206: Yes, but what makes it funny?
The incongruity of Ian Paisley eating a scone. Am I wrong?
WHAT DID YOU EXPECT ME TO EAT?
A PAPIST WAFER?
Also in Britain, "meringue" refers to some sort of solid object, I'm not sure what, instead of just being a whipped pie topping like it is here.
211: No, here too "meringues" can be little cookie-esque things -- hard, crunchy, melt-in-your-mouthy things. (I hate them, but I am in the minority.)
Yep. I love them. Imagine if styrofoam were made of crunchy sugar.
Best if crunchy on the outside and slightly chewy inside.
And they make really convincing mushrooms, if you want to decorate something with mushrooms.
No! They are a terrible bait-and-switch. From afar, you're like, "Oh look! Cookies!" and then you get to them and are all, "Fucking meringues!"
How do they look like cookies? The ones I've seen look like little clouds. Sometimes two little clouds stuck together with delicious cream.
Somebody once told me "It's a macaroon, a type of cookie." That was so obviously wrong that now I trust nobody.
Macaroons are different, although also delicious. I favor the 'sticky lump of coconut' style, although the 'almost a meringue except with ground almonds in it' type is nifty too.
Then there's the potato macaroon:
http://www.madestuff.co.uk/2009/08/10/traditional-scottish-macaroon/
I kid not.
I've never had a potato-based dessert and I'm not sure why I'd want to change that.
'almost a meringue except with ground almonds in it'
That's a macaron, not a macaroon.
Team AAMEWGAII checking in. Also, meringues are delicious, but only once in a while. They're not an everyday cookie.
The Scottish potato ones are nice. Although I've only had them home-made once [a friend's sister], and have largely had mass-produced ones.
Yes those meringue ersatz cookies things are grody to the max. As are their awful cousins, those hard tea cake things with the confectioners sugar. Yuck.
You know what is a good dessert? Those peanut butter cookies with a Hershey's Kiss in the center. Those are the best. Especially if you sub in a mini Reese's Cup for the Kiss.
My wife made some kind of chocolate frosting for cake pops. I want to make that again and put it in between two peanut butter cookies.
Meringues are yummy, though I like them best when they're slightly undercooked with a chewy center. I don't know how you can hate a mix of egg whites, sugar, and vanilla.
Are Irish scones different from other scones? Because I became briefly obsessed this summer with the scones at an Irish bakery up the street. They were like fluffy biscuits, with raisins -- not the dense, crumbly sweet pastries that I'm used to. But then I had this weird encounter with two drunken crazy people at the bakery, so I couldn't go there anymore, because one of the drunken crazy people was the owner. That was really too bad. They had good brown bread, too.
Meringues as cookies seem to be endemic in Italy. This is apparently a very controversial statement, but besides gelato (which is pretty much the best cold dairy dessert product in the world) and tiramisu, Italian desserts are a bit of let down compared with other Italian foods. Perhaps relatedly, Italians have an inexplicable love of hard, bland, crunchy carb products.
That's what I said when everybody said biscotti is good.
240 gets it right. Also, gelato is maybe the third best cold dairy dessert.
Ice cream and frozen yogurt. Gelato is what you make if you're too cheap to use enough cream.
Specific kinds of gelato, I assume.
And I'm interpreting cold to mean frozen. If it includes desserts that are best served chilled, gelato is going to fall further back.
I forgot about frozen custard. Semifreddo sounds interesting but I've never tried it so I can't demote gelato to fifth place just yet.
Eggplant
Hmm...I would rate gelato above ice cream and definitely frozen yogurt. I'm not familiar enough with frozen custard (have had some that was really good, some that was ok), but at least the gelato I've had in Italy has been almost uniformly amazing. I have had some not great gelato in the US, but then I've also had some pretty terrible ice cream. Certainly there is some ice cream better than some gelato, but generalizing I would say as a class gelato is better.
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This is already amusing, but, in a rare occurrence, one of the youtube comments is surprisingly good: "I just don't get why Obama did not bring up the video where Romney tells a bunch of bongo drummers that he really does not care about complex rhythm cycles, it seems he will change his point of view depending on what kind of drummers are watching."
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The comment neb quotes is also good, but I'll have to take his word for it that it was actually posted.
There is an ice cream place in msla that will change your mind. Really. I challenge the both of you, and any lurkers, to an ice cream off.
No gelato I've ever had in Italy compared to what they serve at that place in Courtenay BC.
Gelato is what you make if you're too cheap to use enough cream.
Fruit ice cream is what you make when you're either too cheap to use good quality fruit or too incompetent to realize that adding dairy will make the resulting product worse.
In general, poor or mediocre gelato is worse than poor or mediocre ice cream while the best gelatos are better than the best ice creams even for non fruit flavors. For fruit flavors any decent gelato (or sorbet as it is known in France) is better than the best ice cream version. Getting great gelato in the US is extremely difficult, while it's fairly common in Italy. Really horrible gelato is unfortunately also quite common in Italy. Strangely enough, the horrible version seems to be most common in tourist areas geared towards Italians.
The French are confusing. Sorbet is just frozen sugar water.
Meringues are yummy, though I like them best when they're slightly undercooked with a chewy center.
Most definitely this. My mum makes amazing, plate-sized gooey-centred meringues with only a half-centimetre or so shell. Whereas if you buy a meringue most places it will be small and hard almost all the way through, which is like eating chalky polystyrene.
Oddly, I have visited Meiringen twice without trying a meringue there.
Meiringen
What does Ian Paisley say when he can't hear his phone in his pocket?
I always had the belief that sorbets were dairy-free by definition, but my mom and I checked a bunch at the local grocery store and they definitely contained dairy products.
re: 259
They often contain egg white, but I've never heard of a traditional sorbet [or at least I've never made any or seen a recipe for one] that contained milk or cream. Maybe that's a modern mass-produced thing? Adding in milk protein or yoghurt or something for smoothness.
When I've made them, they've been fruit, sugar, water, and egg white.
257. Did anybody try to push you over a waterfall while you were there?
I found this blogpost on gelato fairly enlightening:
http://exurbe.com/?p=980
(somewhere else on that blog there are some good spot-the-saint-in-classic-art posts.)
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Electric road sign in North Knifecrimea.
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I am so sad I missed this thread. Every time I make biscuits for the in-laws, they are baffled as to why I'm serving them scones at dinner time.
On the other hand, I've been making scones a lot recently (the super crumbly type) and they really are just biscuits. They even have less sugar than my normal biscuit recipe (James Beard's cream biscuits).
I've seen a recipe for the scones that I think JMS is describing ..... I shall make them and report back!