Happiness is under 30 minutes: Scones

Karen Odden - every other Thursday 

When I was growing up, my mother did not like to cook. It was a different era; more food came out of cans (anyone remember La Choy Chow Mein, with the dry noodles in the separate can on top?); and the term “farm to table” did not exist, at least not in the Rochester suburb where I grew up. 

As an adult, I learned to cook for my kids – workmanlike, weekday meals such as chicken parmesan, stir-fry, and risotto – with recipes, and with guidance from my husband, who grew up in a family that Cooked with a capital C. (That capital C should be in a font twice that size, italicized, and in bold. Just saying.) Thanksgiving was a three-day cooking extravaganza complete with hand-torn loaves of stale bread for stuffing and an enormous turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, succotash, homemade cranberry relish (two kinds), and five kinds of pie. His mother filled an entire wall with pots and pans, each particular to a use, on a cork-board along the staircase down to the basement, in addition to the cookware in the kitchen cupboards. My husband still does all the holiday cooking – it’s he who makes French onion soup from scratch and the Beef Wellington in phyllo dough for Thanksgiving every year. (Guests welcome!) 

But my special, small niche in the kitchen is baking. I have a killer triple-decker carrot cake recipe, with lemon cream cheese frosting, that people sometimes ask for, very specifically, when I say, “What can I bring?” to a dinner party. (As in, it may be why I’m invited.) I have a popular lemon tart, with the zing of lemon zest and a shortbread crust. And I make Craisin and white-chocolate scones, light and moist and perfect for breakfast or dessert, that have never failed to please. Bookstore owner and mystery maven Barbara Peters now calls them "the official Poisoned Pen scones," after I repeatedly brought them to my book launches. 

(For those who don't know, the Pen is an indie bookstore in Old Town Scottsdale that specializes in mystery and holds many author events both in person and virtually, so anyone can watch. November guests include Charles Finch, Tasha Alexander, Janet Evanovich, T. Jefferson Parker, and Julia Spencer-Fleming. https://poisonedpen.com/. )

Baking is like writing, somewhat. 

You gather an array of ingredients (characters), and you combine them in a particular order, give or take (meet, fall in love, become enemies). Blend the wet first, then add the dry. Knead, but don’t work the dough too much. Add spices, flavoring to taste (strew clues throughout). It requires perfect attention to the rules with some things (have an inciting incident, spellcheck) but leeway with others (the crime can happen earlier or later). For example, I am scrupulous about my flour measurements (spoon it into the measuring cup; never, ever just dip the cup measure into the flour, or you will use too much) but I always put in more white chocolate chips than the recipe calls for because I like them a bit sweet and the dough has very little sugar. I rough chop the Craisins, which the original recipe doesn’t call for, because then you get that bit of tartness in every bite. (Note -- when I was in Scotland, I discovered there is a Major Controversy about scone shape. They like them in clumpy rounds; mine are pie shaped. They might not even count as scones in the UK. Furthermore, I have also been instructed on the pronunciation of the word: my friend Wendy H. Jones, in Scotland, pronounces it more like "scawns" than "scones.") 

 

After writing all day, I long to work with my hands, engage my senses of taste and smell, and spend time without a screen. So baking is a pleasure. 

For anyone who wants it, this is the scone recipe, adapted from one that friends Evan and Tami gave me, as I’ve amended over the years. They're easy and sure to please.

Happiness is under 30 minutes.  

Ingredients:

1 ¾ c flour, plus some for dusting the surface when kneading 

¼ c sugar 

2 ½ tsp baking powder 

½ tsp salt 

5 Tbsp unsalted butter, chilled and cut into pieces 

1 large egg, beaten 

1 tsp vanilla 

6 Tbsp half-and-half 

¾ c Craisins (chopped/halved) 

¾ c white chocolate chips (I use Nestle; some other brands are larger and don’t combine as well unless you halve them) 

Instructions: 

Mix the first five ingredients together by hand or mixer until they are fully blended into crumbs. Then add the rest, blending until just incorporated. Turn the mixture onto a floured surface and knead for two minutes, adding flour in as needed until it isn’t sticky. Cut the dough and form into two rounds. Cut the rounds along the diameter 4 times (think spokes on a bicycle wheel) to make 8 pieces each; they will be pie shaped. Bake on a flat pan, lined with parchment paper, in a 400-degree oven (or 375 convection), 7-8 minutes. (Every oven is different, and these are like pine nuts, you have to catch them at the right minute.) 

Do not let them brown (they turn sort of taupe), or they will taste burnt. They will puff up a bit and should be lightly golden along the edges. Remove from the pan and cool on a rack.

Summer of My Discontent

SUJATA MASSEY

I have a sentimental relationship with summer. To me it’s a season where certain traditions find their way into three months. I have grand expectations for June to August. I'll know that I'll eat a few dozen ears of corn on the cob. I anticipate getting at least my toes into the ocean or bay or a lake, with good company beside me. I look forward to a few roadtrips with a packed cooler of good food. Riding in my car, I expect to keep hearing a pop song that’s mysteriously caught on with so many deejays that it’s become the de facto summer anthem. During my singleton days, there would also often be a summer romance that would begin in May or June and end before Halloween. Summer always brought tastes of peach cake, berry pies, and homemade ice cream.

I’m older now, and if you asked me two days ago about how things are lining up with expectation, I'd say the only consistency is that the corn has been good. In the midst of a heatwave, my husband and I left 90-plus Baltimore on a strenuous drive to move our son to Nashville, where the weather was even worse. This summer, we got no closer to a body of water than driving by the Baltimore Inner Harbor.  

Oh, this summer does seem to be the one which rebels against pattern. Covid walloped me coming home from a late spring trip to Greece. The good news was I only felt ill for one day—and as far as I know, none of my contacts caught it. But a month after Covid, two insect bites appeared on one arm, both ringed with round scarlet rashes. I didn't think tick bites ever came in twos and was ready to believe it was spider bites, but muscle and joint aches and brain fog followed. I went on Doxycline for two weeks. Yesteryear's summer romance had morphed into a dangerous one-night stand with someone who wanted to leave me with Lyme Disease, Ehrlichiosis, Babesiosis or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. All over the US in 2025, tick-borne illness is exploding, and I remain very grateful to have been prescribed medicine which actually fought the infection.  I recovered, re-emerging from health anxiety into a city where the heat had stayed brutal from its late June on set into early August. 

When I read a weather forecast and know the day will be miserable, I rise at 5 a.m. to experience a few pleasant hours.One of my great pleasures during these times is reading the Sunday New York Times with morning coffee on my front porch, which has a gently whirring ceiling fan. I tried to keep the tradition going, but reading the papers these days makes me anxious. Famine and death and invasion of Gaza, and more than 60,000 people in America dragged off to detention, mostly without due process. And then I see articles about  discontinuing vaccines, shutting down science research, firing government service workers, and shackling universities to censorious oversight. The Voting Rights Act is at risk, and the National Guard have already been sent by the president to break up protests in Los Angeles and remove the homeless from Washington DC. 

I don't know if there is a pop song that’s evocative of this summer; it would probably be too profane for me. I’ve been busy listening to podcasts, though. Favorite are The Ezra Klein Show, We Can Do Hard Things, Rick Steves Travel, and, to fall asleep, Nothing Much Happens. One day, I heard a cookbook author being interviewed on the PBS radio cooking show, Splendid Table. The author, Nicole Rucker, was describing elements of her unorthodox pastry and cake recipes to show host Francis Lam, and I started to salivate. I realized that I hadn’t had a single piece of pie yet. Poor me!

A few days later, I got blueberries and blackberries at the Saturday farmers' market, and I also bought the cookbook. Fat+Flour. I got going on a Monday, right around the time I should have been making a sensible, sugar-free dinner. But I had a couple of sticks of Kerry Gold butter and was going for broke. 

Straight off, I’ll say that the book's subhead promises "a simple bake," and the recipe I followed for Blueberry-Lavender Pie involved many hours of work—starting with making a crust dough that needs chilling to set up before it’s rolled. My freezer was opened and shut for various processes, including freezing half the fruit for the pie, chilling the liquid that goes into the crust, which and then chilling the pie pan with a crimped crust, and later the fully assembled pie with its tasty cream-cheese-butter-flour crumb topping. With oven time of one-hour, the entire process took me almost 5 hours. I found that I really didn’t mind cooking for so long, just for myself, in a quiet, air-conditioned kitchen. The process of following steps was so complicated that allowed me to focus. I've heard of moving meditation. Is there such a thing as a cooking meditation? 

I waited almost the recommended hour to cut into the warm pie. The butter-flour-sugar-salt-cider vinegar crust had strength and tenderness and a great flavor. The berry filling—different from the recipe because I added blackberries, and a lavender-lemon syrup instead of culinary lavender—was tartly glorious. This pie reminded me of the mythical marvels I’ve tasted at roadside diners and pie shops in small-town Wisconsin and Northern Minnesota. But no Crisco in this pie--just Irish butter, three different kinds of sugar and berries from Black Rock Orchard, a steadfast fruit farm I've known for decades.

I wasn't planning on blogging when I was baking and eating last night. I wish I had a picture to show you of the whole pie . . but this is what I’ve got left. I’ll eat a bit more every day. And I will bake another pie, using this book, no matter how complicated it might be. Pie-making brought summer back to me, it's just that simple. 

A Showdown of Peaches

 Sujata Massey

I consider myself tolerant of heat. Yet over the last few days, I'll admit that the air in Baltimore, Maryland, has felt like a poison gas sauna. And it's not just me. Even Daisy, my energetic Yorkshire terrier, refuses to take a walk.

At the same time, the early mornings of late are wonderful—warm without being oppressive, and somewhat shady in our neighborhood. I try to get to the farmers market on the weekend and have been rewarded with gorgeous produce that’s not available other times of the year. I'm getting purslane to use in salads. Tiny sweet plums, for devouring in two bites. Melons that taste like the sweetest perfume, and fragrant boughs of basil. Every color of tomato, and what I wait for each year: white and golden peaches. 

 

Because I'm I in an end stage of editing (Perveen Mistry Book 4 almost turned in), I decided to celebrate with a relaxing hands-on activity that was far from my keyboard. I'd been thinking about a paleo peach cake recipe that my sister emailed me. Also, I'd noticed an old recipe for something called Baltimore Peach Cake was doing laps on the Internet. I thought, why not throw caution to the wind and just bake them both? Yes, on the same day. It would be a showdown of two different styles of cake.

.

My bet was in favor of the more historic recipe, Baltimore peach cake. I first tasted it during my early years in the city, when I'd spot $3 pieces of this bargain cake wrapped as a to-go item on the counters of casual cafes and bakeries--but only in mid to late summer. I didn’t know then that “Baltimore Peach Cake” was an actual recipe for a simple yeast-dough cake topped with sliced peaches. And everyone in the city knew it, just as they know about sauerkraut being an important Thanksgiving dish. 

The most-shared published recipe for this dessert originates with an alternative newspaper, The Baltimore City Paper, which I freelanced for toward the end of college. I didn't come across the recipe, then, though. And truly, it goes back to Baltimore’s German community. I take this as gospel because I’ve had the fraternal twin to this cake, a yeast dough topped with plums, made by my own German mother. My mom’s pflaumenkuchen was rather sour because we were limited to California prune-plums that shipped to Minnesota; there were no plum trees in the state. Pflaumenkuchen was served with a bowl of sugar next to it, so the eater could ladle the sweeteners it sorely needed on top. I did enjoy plum cake, but it was strictly a connoisseur's dessert.

 

So how did a German cake get labeled a Baltimore cake? The answer is immigration. Germans began settling in the area of the Chesapeake that became the city of Baltimore since the early 1700s. The largest waves of Germans came during the 19^th century, when the Port of Baltimore was the second largest entry point for immigrants to the United States. Sections of West Baltimore were built up with elegant townhouses into a prime residential district for wealthy German Jews, civic leaders who founded long-gone department stores like Hutzlers and the Hecht Company. Neighborhoods like Highlandtown, Federal Hill and Locust Point were full of German-descended Baltimoreans of all income levels and the Lutheran and Catholic religions.  It’s easy to imagine the sound of German being spoken by neighbors sitting out on their marble rowhouse steps (we call them ‘stoops’) in hot summer evenings. And Mutti (or Mutti’s granddaughter) arriving with a piece of peach cake on a napkin for a friend stopping by to catch the breeze.

 

I believe it’s the typically hot summers in our Mid-Atlantic area that make our peaches so juicy and sweet—and also the warm temperatures in July and August that make baking this cake possible. After all, it’s a yeast dough. Once that's coddled and stretched into a pan, you top it with straight lines of peach slices. It's that simple. However, the time to prep and bake was about three hours for me. Not a quickie, by any means. 

 

The second recipe on my agenda was a gluten- and refined sugar-free cake recipe from food writer Michelle Tam, whose website Nom Nom Paleo is wildly popular with people eating modified diets. The so-called 'paleo diet' is not necessarily low in calories. The eating style agets its name from the word “paleolithic,” and involves meats, vegetables and some fats, and avoids beans, milk, sugar and white flour. So this paleo peach cake recipe calls for maple sugar (although I found that maple sugar is actually VERY sweet). The cake’s batter contained both almond flour, a favorite of mine, and cassava flour, which I had never tried before. I was feeling slightly daring to try it, because I’d heard the tuber plant from South America, Africa and Asia is mildly poisonous if you eat it raw. However, if the cassava plant is dried and ground, the poison isn’t there anymore, and it becomes a highly nutritious flour. The recipe’s other ingredients ranged from the ordinary—butter, vanilla, eggs, vanilla extract and baking soda—to the more unusual: ground cardamom and canned coconut milk. I am a fanatic for cardamom and had some single-origin cardamom pods from Kerala that I was eager to pulverize for the sake of this cake.

 

Baking takes time, so I started my day of desserts by baking the Baltimore peach cake, because it was a yeast dough. I rarely do anything with yeast, and although the packet I opened was not yet expired, the granules within refused to foam up when added to warm water. I had to microwave it 15 seconds to get any action. Furthermore, the dough refused to rise, and I had a sneaking suspicion it was because my air conditioning was too powerful. In the end, I took the bowl outside, put a plate on top to keep out the bugs, and let it rise in the good old Baltimore 90- plus degree morning. 

 

The exposure therapy worked! After an hour, I thought the dough had grown slightly. I was able to easily stretch the dough to fit a 9x13-inch pan. Baltimore peach cake recipes aren’t usually specific about whether you need to peel the peaches. However, the paleo peach cake recipe called for getting the skins off, so I did take the skins off all the peaches by dipping them for a minute in boiling water. How pretty and promising the Baltimore peach cake looked once the peaches were laid in place!

This second recipe, for the Paleo peach cake, called for a round pan. The recipe's author, Michelle Tam, included tips like practicing a layout of peaches on a plate before doing the real thing, and cutting out parchment liner for the pan that makes complete sense for lifting out a completed cake. Also, I only had to deal with cake batter in this recipe--not yeast-based dough. I was pleased that this cake took less than two hours, start to finish.

 

Even six hours after baking, my kitchen was filled with the scent of fruit and sugar. I tried both cakes warm, a few minutes out of the oven. And what a surprise--I lost my earlier bet with myself. I found the Paleo cake more moist, flavorful, and worthy of gorging. The cardamom and almond flour were fantastic. However, the Baltimore peach cake contained less sugar per square inch than the Paleo one, which makes it a great dessert for people who are avoiding super sweet foods. And a pretty decent snack to take in the car, or to have with morning coffee.

I sampled each cake right after they were baked. In the evening, I had another sliver with ice cream. The fury of heat had been swept off in a massive rain storm. It was refreshing to go out with my cake and sit on the porch, savoring memories of past Baltimore summers, and knowing  I’d spent one of the summer's worst days like an old-time Baltimore lady. 

 

My revised Baltimore Peach Cake Recipe (inspired by the Baltimore City Paper)

Makes at least 12 servings

¼ cup of warm water (no more than 110 degrees)

1 individual package of active dry yeast

1 cup of milk, scalded

¼ to ½ cup of sugar, depending on your taste

1 teaspoon fine salt

¼ cup of melted unsalted butter

1 egg, lightly beaten

3 cups of flour 

1 teaspoon of crushed cardamom seeds taken from pods, or powdered cardamom spice 

Vegetable oil for greasing bowl

4 ripe peaches, briefly immersed in boiling water to peel off the skins

4 tablespoons of peach or apricot preserves or orange marmalade for glaze (optional)

 

1.     Set up the yeast by putting it in the ¼ cup of warm water for 5-10 minutes.

2.     Then, add the yeast water to a large bowl that contains all the sugar, salt and melted butter, and the beaten egg. Stand mixer or by hand are both fine.

3.     Mix the cardamom with the flour in another bowl.

4.     Add half the flour-cardamom mixture to the wet ingredients; then add the remaining amount. If the dough you’ve made is way too sticky, add 1 or 2 tablespoons of flour. 

5.     Knead the dough for two minutes, then put it in an oiled bowl, cover it, and let it rest and rise for at least an hour in a warm place. It should double. Mine didn’t, but it was still ok.

6.     After that first hour of rising, punch down the dough, and let it rise for another half hour, or hour, if you are not seeing much progress.

7.     Fit the dough into a buttered 9-by-13 inch baking pan.

8.     Pit the peaches, and then slice them ½ inch thick and lay atop the dough in rows. Press down for emphasis.

9.     Bake at 375 degrees about 30 to 35 minutes, or until dough’s edge is golden-brown.

10.  When the cake comes out, brush it with melted preserves or marmalade. Eat as soon as you like, either plain or with whipped cream or ice cream.

 

 

I only made one modification (a marmalade glaze) to the gluten and refined sugar-free dessert described by me as a paleo peach cake.  Therefore, I’m sharing the original  recipe from the Nom Nom Paleo site. Technically, it's called Fresh Peach Cake and was created by Michelle Tam.