Where food, family and friends gather, Simply Gourmet: 144. Oatmeal Raspberry Orange Scones

Carrie from Bakaholicmama sent out a request for bloggers and cooks who would be interested in joining her in preparing the recipes out of JoyWilson's book Joy the Baker. I thought for a few minutes and then decided that this sounded like a fun experience.

I had never heard of Joy and thought it would be fun to learn about a new author, writer and blogger. I ordered her book on Monday and received it on Wednesday (thank you Amazon and Prime shipping).

Carrie asked us to make the first recipe which is, Oatmeal Raspberry Ginger Scones. You can see that I have made one change already. I did not have any ginger and my family does not eat a lot of this spice. I did have grated orange peel leftover from the Orange Bow Knots and I LOVE LOVE LOVE orange and raspberry together. Did I mention LOVE…LOL

In my emails back and forth with Carrie she was open to us (the group) of making any changes or alterations. I think that Joy would be okay with this too. As a cook, I understand that any recipe I post to my blog is always open to interpretation, ingredients on hand, food allergies and taste buds.

My second change to the recipe was making it gluten free. I knew that when I read the recipe this would be an easy conversion, and it was. I will give you the original and then I will put in red the changes for a gluten free scone.

Now, I have had this debate before, in regards to, the word scone. In some parts its a biscuit, deep friend, Indian flat bread or an elephant ear. I know it's confusing and down right mind boggling the differences between the two styles.

This is Joys interpretation of a scone and I loved it! I ran into a few things while making my batch and chalked it up to "gluten free conversion issues" and learned that other bloggers were having the same type of outcomes. It was nothing bad, gross or wrong. Just different then what you would expect.

I can tell you from the other bloggers that the dough is wet, that the scone is similar to an oatmeal cookie in texture, it spreads when baked and if you add more flour, the scone still comes out well.

It has been so much fun meeting the other ladies in our group, comparing notes and bonding with other food photography enthusiast.

Thank you Carrie for whipping up a great group of ladies to cook our way through Joy the Baker's book.

Recipe: Oatmeal Raspberry Orange Scone

Original recipe by Joy Wilson, Joy the Baker adapted by Sherron Watson

makes 12 scones

1 large egg

1/2 cup cold buttermilk

1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour (1 cup of almond meal, 3/4 cup white rice flour and 1/4 cup of tapioca flour)

1 1/3 cups old fashioned oats

1/3 cup sugar (I used brown sugar)

1 Tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 to 3/4 cup fresh or frozen raspberries or blueberries

1 Tablespoon finely chopped fresh ginger (I used grated orange rind)

1 stick plus 2 Tablespoons (10 tablespoons) cold unsalted butter, grated on a box grater or cut into small pieces

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

In a small bowl combine the eggs and buttermilk together and set aside.

Whisk together the flour, oats, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt , ginger and nutmeg in a large bowl. Joy suggest that you use a box grater to shred the butter. This works great. Combine the butter with the dry ingredients until the butter is coated and crumbly.

Pour the egg and buttermilk mixture over the dry ingredients and stir with a fork. Gently fold in the berries. When you add the berries, do not over mix or your batter will turn blue.

I used a spoon and dropped my scones on to my baking sheet. The dough was a bit wet. Because we are using a gluten free version you will not have to knead the dough. Directly from the bowl you can use a scoop or a spoon and space your scones about 2 inches apart, they will spread a bit. If you make them smaller than larger, they work better.

Bake for 20 minutes or until their tops are golden. Transfer them to a rack and cool for 10 minutes before serving. See note below.

NOTE: With a lot of gluten free baked goods, it is best to let the scones cool on the cookie sheet and then transfer to a cookie rack to finish cooling.

I also added a simple orange glaze to my scones. I did this because some people find the gluten free flours to taste a bit different. This was a nice finish for the scone.

Recipe: Orange Glaze

1 cup of powdered sugar

1 Tablespoon orange rind, grated finely

1/4 orange juice

Mix all together until smooth. Drizzle over each scone.