What do I say? I made these back in October when we were prepping for Halloween. By now you should know that things have changed pretty dramatically. On Halloween we got engaged. Life got pretty real with a lot of ground hog day going on. We had a great friend come up and I threw these scones together while they were here. At this point I’d never made caramel before. I’m still only about 50% successful at that. 0% for brown butter or brown sugar caramel. Anyway due to that I wussed out and didn’t make caramel for these and used the store bought candies. Sad I know. Trust me. They were good, but didn’t hold up well. they also didn’t photograph well. They must not have as much water in them to make them soft. Lessons learned here. I now have a mason jar full of my first attempt at caramel that I stick a spoon into every now and then. I’m shocked at how well that turned out.

Our friend doesn’t really like scones, but fell in love with these. They were the most moist and crumbly perfect scones they’d had. I sent them home with the rest of them. I think they ate 2 of them while they were here and that was only a few hours. That was a huge confidence boost. Thank you! It was great to have you stay with us. I’m glad you enjoyed these. I haven’t really talked much about the scones but they’re based off of the King Arthur Baking Company cream scones. I find them easier to make than a standard butter scone. Maybe that’s because the time I made butter scones my pastry cutter handle broke. Stupid cold butter. Stupid pastry cutter. Not sure which one of you to blame there, but it clearly wasn’t me. With it being October we were in the early part of fall so I baked off some apples, spiced them and the scones and threw it all together. The hardest part for me with scones is getting everything mixed to the right moisture level without over mixing. KA did a post on their Instagram where they used a dough scraper to separate the properly mixed parts and the dry parts as they added more cream. It was a genius idea so I figured I’d pass that along. I saw it way after I made these, so I just got lucky here. Nothing worse than making scones and over mixing because things are still dry. I still find scones difficult and a bit scary.

As part of our “fall” collaboration we pulled a tarot card for these two. All of that got away from us too. Seeing as how it’s December 1st we’ll just lie and say it’s still mid October. The card pulled is the Ace of Cups from the deck by Micah Urlich. It’s a great deck. I’ve only personally read from it once so far. In the card we see a skeletal figure holding a cup with a plant sprouting out of it. The deck can be a bit “dark” so saying this is a positive card can be hard for some to see. The card represents the need to let go of emotional baggage and start living life to the fullest. As an existentialist this means that it’s time to give your life its on meaning and move forward. Perfect timing there as a few weeks later we’d be engaged. Putting your past behind you and moving forward and accepting love is a key part of this card. Again, little did I know just how accurate that would be.

To those who are spiritual and have made it this far in the post please note that no Wheels of the year were harmed by the scones. It was safely on some foil to protect our calendar.

Ingredients

• 3 Cups King Arthur Unbleached All Purpose Flour

• 1/4 Cup granulated sugar

• 1 teaspoon of salt

• 1 Tablespoon of baking powder

• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon

• 1/2 teaspoon of all spice

• 1/4 teaspoon of ground cloves

• 1 1/3 - 1 1/2 Cups of heavy cream

• 2 Tablespoons of maple syrup

• 2 teaspoons of vanilla

• 1 Tablespoon of turbinado raw sugar

• 1 apple cut into 1/4 inch chunks

• 10 caramel candies cut into fourths

Instructions

Apples:

1. Preheat oven to 325

2. cut the apples into 1/4 inch chunks (discard the core)

3. spread out on a baking sheet covered in aluminum foil

4. bake for 12 minutes and 30 seconds

5. remove foil, with apples on it, from the pan and let cool while making the cookies

Scones:

1. Preheat the oven to 425°F.

2. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, all spice, and ground cloves

3. In a 2 cup liquid measuring cup mix the heavy cream, vanilla, and maple syrup

4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until there’s no flour on the bottom of the bowl. Add more heavy cream as necessary. Do it one Tablespoon at a time. ** note in the story above to make this all easier

5. Roll the dough out on a floured surface - normally you’d split the dough in half but for this one I didn’t and it worked perfectly.

6. Cut the circle into 6 pieces and move to the baking tray. Keep them an inch apart.

7. Lightly brush the tops with heavy cream and sprinkle with raw sugar

8. Bake for 13 minutes until the tops are lightly browned.

9. Top with the caramel candies (if using) and bake for 5 more minutes until just melted

10. Let them cool on cooling racks before devouring

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