When my mom was visiting from the East Coast a few months ago, she went to every single farmer's market in and around Santa Cruz, including the UCSC farm, and brought home every vegetable and fruit imaginable. She spent days preparing yummy Indian dishes and other things like garlic, ginger and chili paste and popped them into the freezer for me to use. This batch of yummy farm-fresh strawberries comes from the farm stand at UCSC farm, probably less than a day after they were picked, and then frozen by Mother.
The recipe calls for buttermilk, for which I have to admit, I have found a genius trick. Instead of buying a bottle of buttermilk and have it sit in the fridge and go bad unused, I buy buttermilk powder in bulk. It can sit in your pantry for months, and all you do is add water.
Strawberry Buttermilk Scones
1 cup All Purpose flour
1.5 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1.5 T sugar
1/4 t salt
1 T lemon zest
3 T butter, chilled and chopped
1 cup chopped strawberries
1/3 cup buttermilk
Preheat oven 400 degrees F. Mix all dried ingredients together. Add the lemon zest and then the butter. Fork the butter into the flour mixture until it is crumbly.
Add strawberries and stir. Add the buttermilk, mix for a few seconds and plop onto a cutting board. Form the dough into a ball (Do not overmix or knead - this is not breadmaking). Form into a roundish mound and cut into 4 pieces. Place them onto a parchment-lined baking sheet (or a Silpat), and top with crunchy sugar. Bake for 15-20 minutes and eat immediately !
I leapt out of bed to get a good run in by the cliff (pictured below), and I ran back and made a yummy breakfast before the rest of the errands that need to be done before the end of the day.
