And yet another version of "strawberry" scones...

I keep worrying that if I make all the easy/familiar things first, I will be stuck at the end with weeks of hard/strange things to make...like the kitchen clambake on p. 126! (the scariest to me!) But after all the scone talk yesterday, I wanted a go at those scones.

I chastised Carissa for changing the recipe so much...then I did the same thing myself! I thought the dried strawberries way too much effort to try to find--and could just imagine what the cost would be if I did find them! But I remembered that I still have fresh frozen cranberries in my freezer from last Christmas. (I like to make cranberry bread all year.) But I probably should use them up before the new ones come out this fall! And I know there is a cranberry muffin recipe in the book--but no worry, I still have probably 4 more cups of frozen cranberries to use. So I used cranberries instead of dried strawberries. At least there is no significant juice factor involved in using fresh cranberries.

I did decide to double the sugar to 1/4 cup to make up for the tartness of the fresh cranberries. And, like Carissa, I cut the salt back some, to 1 1/2 teaspoon--2 teaspoons just felt like too much. I accidentally changed the butter amount, by not putting on my glasses and misreading 3/4 pound for 1/2 pound. But I might have changed that anyway as that is SO much butter! However, I did have heavy cream in the fridge so I was using that full version of fat. Oh, and I added some toasted chopped walnuts just because they seem to go well with cranberries. I cut the scones smaller than Ina says, and scrunched them all on one baking sheet--but later decided I probably should have used 2 sheets and spread them out more.

I thought the scones were good, but of course, David, like most men, thought they needed way more sugar. So I had him dig out a forgotten jar of homemade strawberry/fig jam I made last year...the remnant's were in the back of the fridge...and that was perfect on a split scone. Even I agreed they really do need to be served with jam in order for people not to feel the need to say they would like them even better if they were sweeter!

Have you noticed that most of Ina's recipes are quite large--more for company than family-sized? I feel like she must be reducing the restaurant size recipes, and at some point just feels she simply cannot reduce that recipe any more! So now I have a tremendous amount of cranberry walnut scones in my freezer.

You know...taking the pictures is almost as fun as the cooking!