Baking Bouchon - Recipe 17: Chocolate Cherry Scones

Here we go again with the dried fruit.  Dried cherries might be worse than raisins because they're bigger and harder to ignore.  The one saving grace of the cherries in this recipe is that you soak them in booze for 24 hours.  Booze makes everything better.  Plus, there are chocolate chips which distracts me enough from the dried fruit to not hate these scones.

This ingredients in this scone recipe are a little different from the plain scones I made a few weeks ago.  The plain scones used all purpose and cake flour, this one is all all purpose.  The other used crème fraîche, this one does not.  I do think the plain scones had a more delicate texture but the chocolate cherry scones may need a bit more heft to them to hold up to the cherries and chocolate.

Macerating the cherries is the first step.  The recipe calls for the cherries to be mixed with a heated mixture of water, sugar and kirsch.  Kirsch is a clear, unsweetened cherry brandy.  We did not have any on hand, but we did have Cherry Heering.  Cherry Heering is a clear, sweetened cherry liquor.  I figured a little extra sugar never hurt anyone, especially not in a scone.

To make the scones, you take your cold, cold butter and mix it with the dry ingredients until the butter is cut into pea sides chunks.  Add your cream, then the strained cherries and chocolate.  Easier than pie.

The dough gets chilled, then scooped into balls and frozen before being baked.

In my opinion the best part of these scones is the glaze.  You keep some of the liquid (booze) that the cherries were macerating in and mix that with powdered sugar and cream to get a yummy (boozy) cherry glaze that you brush on the still warm scones.

The morning I baked these up, CA had a snow day so even he got to enjoy a fresh hot scones.  He may have liked them more than I did since he doesn't have a dried fruit aversion.  I actually prefer savory scones, but I have to get through Cinnamon Honey Scones before I get to Bacon Cheddar Scones.  Oh, the humanity.

Julie