I’m going to join my friend Audrey for her new inspired-by linky today with a recipe for scones that I made up slash adapted. I’m never sure with recipes how much you have to change before you can call it YOUR recipe. I mean, all baking is just science and math with proportions of wet to dry ingredients, so no matter how original your recipe for bread or cake or cookies or whatever is, there’s a good chance someone else has a nearly identical recipe somewhere.

I was inspired by these Cheddar-Chive Scones I found on Epicurious. (Sidenote: I am OBSESSED with Epicurious.) Wait, no, scratch that. I started with these Jalapeno-Cheddar scones from smitten kitchen my friend Sarah suggested more than a year ago. I made them, I ate them, I was underwhelmed. But in my MIND they were totally delicious and I’ve been thinking about finding a new scone recipe ever since. Scones sound fancy and you can put almost anything into them – sweet, savory, salty, cheesy, fruit, herbs, vegetables, whatever. I wanted to make the Cheddar Chive scones from Epicurious to bring to Easter dinner but I didn’t have any chives (and am too lazy to go to the store). So I replaced the chives with rosemary, the cheddar with Parmesan and added a little lemon peel to make them spring-like. Then I adjusted the rest of the ingredients to make it work (tm Tim Gunn).

Brunchy Lemon Rosemary Parmesan Scones

3 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons sugar
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh lemon peel, grated
1 cup Parmesan cheese
2 cups heavy cream plus extra to brush on top

Preheat oven to 400. In a large bowl, mix together all ingredients except for cream. Add in the cream 1 cup at a time, making sure to stir up everything from the bottom until you have a sticky dough. (You could use a mixer if you want but I did it with a spatula and it was easy.) Turn out dough onto a floured surface and kneed approximated 10 times. Divide dough in half, roll out each half, flatten into a long rectangle and cut into wedges.

Place on an ungreased cookie sheet, brush the top of each scone with a little heavy cream and bake for 20 minutes until golden brown. Delicious warm but travel well.

Notes:
1. I used the cheap Kraft cheese in the green container because I didn’t have any real Parmesan and *I* thought they turned out a little on the salty side. None of my taste testers were bothered by it, but you could probably use half as much salt.
2. I actually ran out of regular flour and used whole wheat for the last 1/2 cup. You couldn’t tell at all, so if you wanted to use more whole wheat – say 1 1/2 cups – I don’t think anyone would know, PLUS you could call them healthy! Just don’t mention the cream.

Happy Baking!

Tags: baking, brunch, food porn, inspired by, recipes, spring, things I love