Category: Cookies and cakes

Pat’s Scones And Lemon Curd

Here is the story behind some wonderful scones I first enjoyed at the coffee hour after worship service at our church.  Pat was serving scones with some sort of yellow pudding. When I asked for an explanation, she told me that what I called pudding was actually lemon curd, a topping made specifically to complement the scones.  My knowledge of curds consisted of the Mother Goose rhyme about Little Miss Muffat who ate something that I assumed resembled cottage cheese.

The curd that Pat offered me was a delicate smooth sauce that contributed a wonderful flavor to the scone I was devouring.

Here is Pat’s account of how she came to acquire the recipe.

“I went to Star Prairie Elementary and had six great classmate friends.  We went through the grades together and graduated together.  Raising families, we were only able to keep in touch at Christmas.  At age sixty this particular friend suggested we start taking long weekend getaways up north.

We loved our time together!  Mornings were lounging, coffee, PJ times with great conversations.  Each of us brought breakfast and snack items.  This friend always brought these scones and lemon curd.  She shared her recipe and I have been making them ever since.

It is an especially cherished memory as she is no longer with us.”

Pat’s story is a good example of how recipes tie us together.  We share them with our neighbors, friends, relatives and children, and some of those recipes are preserved for future generations long after the people who first started the chain of a shared treasure are gone.

INGREDIENTS FOR THE SCONES:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 cup granulated sugar

2 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

1 square white chocolate, shaved

1/2 cup cold butter

1 large egg. beaten

1/2 cup Half & Half or whole milk

1/2 tsp. almond extract

Fruit of your choice (optional)

Extra sugar for garnish

PROCEDURE:

Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt into a mixing bowl.  Shave the white chocolate and stir it into the flour mixture.  Beat the egg and blend it with the Half & Half or milk and almond extract.

Preheat the oven to 375º and grease a baking sheet.

Chop the butter into a quarter-inch dice and cut it into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.  Add the liquid ingredients and stir until the dough is barely moistened. 

If you wish, gently stir in about a half cup of fruit and lightly knead the dough for a few seconds.

Drop rounded tablespoons of batter on the baking sheet, sprinkle lightly with sugar and bake about twenty minutes until lightly browned. 

INGREDIENTS FOR THE LEMON CURD:

1 1/4 cups granulated sugar

4 large eggs

1 T light corn syrup

3/4 cup lemon juice

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter cut into chunks

PROCEDURE:

Cut the butter into a half-inch dice.  Whisk the sugar and eggs together in a heavy saucepan.  Whisk in the lemon juice and syrup and stir in the butter.

Set the pan over medium-low heat and stir constantly until the curd thickens and a few small bubbles appear.  This will take eight to ten minutes.  Do not bring the curd to a boil.  Spoon and scrape the curd into two small jars or  plastic containers.  Press plastic wrap on the surface to prevent the formation of a skin on top.  Cool the containers and refrigerate or freeze them.  You will have enough curd for two batches of scones.  You can freeze the curd and keep it for up to a year.

NOTES:  Use fresh lemon juice for the curd, not lemon juice from concentrate.  Pat says that if she can’t find white chocolate squares, she uses about a half cup of white chocolate chips.  She also says that the curd freezes well, so you can save half for a second batch of scones.  Use very low heat to avoid scorching the curd.

Teri’s Grandma’s Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Grandpa and Grandma Rang’s farm was two miles from their church at Phipps, Wisconsin.  Trinity Lutheran Church was a modest white clapboard church built in 1905 on land donated by a parishioner.  Another family donated five acres across from the church for a cemetery.  The church was demolished many years ago, and trees grow where I once recited Bible verses, but the cemetery is still maintained, and we visit it regularly to put flowers on the graves of my parents.

My first memories of church services and other activities all involve that little church.  My mother and father were active members, which meant that we kids were also part of that church family.  It was there that I learned that one should fill the front pews out of respect for the minister, that you didn’t need fancy clothes but you should wash and wear clean pants and shirts and that you kept quiet and paid attention during the service.  Mom made sure that I was dressed in a clean white shirt and wore a clip-on tie every Sunday.

I remember potlucks with lots of food and time to play with the other kids while our fathers met on church business with the minister and our mothers visited with each other.  By the time I was five or six I was one of the kids who had walk-on roles in the Christmas play.  While the older kids were dressed as angels, Mary or Joseph or the three Wise Men and recited scripture, we little kids pretended to be shepherds or, worse, sheep. 

It must have been a Christmas service that persuaded Grandpa and Grandma Rang to take their family to church on a snowy December night in 1922.  My father told me the story many years ago.  In the summer, the family rode to church in their Overland touring car, but in winter they traveled by horse and sleigh.  On that occasion, however, the snow was so deep that the horse could not pull the sleigh.

“It just acted like a plow,” said my father.  “Pa told us we would have to walk.  So that’s what we did.  And we weren’t the only ones.”

“Pa broke trail, and George and Margaret who were bigger helped tramp down the snow.  I helped Stub get through it and Ma made sure no one got lost.    It took us a while, but we made it in time for the service.  The minister’s wife had hot cider for everyone afterwards in the parsonage next door to the church.

“It was easier walking home, because we had made a pretty good trail.  Harold (my father’s younger brother) was born about two months later.  Ma and Harold did just fine.”

Today I think often of this story when church is canceled because of a winter snow or ice storm warning.  My wife explains, “People don’t want to have an accident driving in bad weather.” I don’t reply, but the temptation is there:  “Couldn’t they just walk?”

Though Dad did not mention them, I would be nearly certain that the minister’s wife would have put out a plate of cookies to fortify the parishioners for their walks home.  One Sunday when Connie Schultz and her daughter Teri were hosting the coffee and treats after the service, they had made an old-fashioned raisin oatmeal cookie that I’m sure would have been familiar to the minister’s wife and my father.  

Teri told me that they are one of the first cookies she remembers making with her grandma Rachael Schultz.  They aren’t overly sweet but are delightfully moist.  Connie explained that boiling the raisins was probably the reason why the cookies stayed so moist.  Whatever the explanation, the recipe for these cookies deserves a place in your recipe box.

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup butter

1 cup raisins

2 large eggs

Pinch of salt

1/2 tsp. nutmeg

1 tsp. cinnamon 

1 tsp. vanilla

2 cups old fashioned oatmeal

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 cup chopped walnuts

PROCEDURE:

Start by bringing the eggs and a cup of butter to room temperature by setting them out an hour or so before starting the cookies.

Put a cup of raisins into a small saucepan and cover them with water.  Bring the pan to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer the raisins for ten minutes.  Remove the pan from the heat and let the raisins cool a bit.

While the raisins are cooling, cream together the sugar and butter in a large mixing bowl.  Add the eggs, spices, and five tablespoons of the raisin liquid to the creamed sugar.  Sift half of the flour and soda into the liquid ingredients, then stir in the oatmeal followed by the rest of the flour.  Drain the raisins and blend them and the walnuts into the batter.  You will have a moist batter.

Drop batter by rounded teaspoonfuls onto greased cookie sheets and bake at 350º for ten to twelve minutes until the cookies begin to brown on the edges.  Cool them on wax paper and store the cookies in an airtight container.

NOTES:  In case you are wondering, a pinch of salt is about a sixteenth of a teaspoon, roughly the amount you can pick up with your thumb and first two fingers.  If you are using unsalted butter, use a quarter of a teaspoon of salt.

If the batter looks a little too moist, you can stir in a tablespoon or two of flour at this point.