Adventures In Baking(sitting)

Poor wordplay based off of late 80s comedies aside, I decided to try my hand at baking cinnamon-sugar scones on Saturday morning. I am, by no means, a proficient baker. I have baked some banana bread (no nuts) in the past, which came out very good the first time and less than good the second time, which was when I tried to entirely replace sugar with Splenda™ (curse you diabetes), but lately I have been watching far too much Great British Bakeoff on Netflix, so it was bound to happen at some point that I would decide to try my hand at some simple baking.

A few weeks ago, I was searching around on the internet for recipes for scones, and with my love of the cinnamon crunch scones at Panera, and my overall general love for all things cinnamon, I came across this recipe for cinnamon sugar scones. The recipe looked easy enough, I know how to follow directions, so I figured lets give this a try, can’t be too difficult!

During our most recent trip to ALDI, I picked up the few missing ingredients, unsalted butter (I don’t know why I prefer salted for everything in my life, don’t judge me) and some heavy cream. The only thing missing were the cinnamon chips, and I figured an easy trip to any of the Kroger stores near me would be sufficient for picking up those. How wrong I was.

Friday Night

My plan was to make these for breakfast on Saturday morning, prior to going to the French Food Festival here in Richmond, VA, at the Little Sisters of the Poor for lunch. Since Amber and I were going to be out on Friday night, getting dinner and making a trip to a department store to look for some other items, I asked if we could just run down the road to (not my usual) Kroger and grab some cinnamon chips so we could be on our way home to finally finish watching season 3 of Fargo. Naturally she agreed, because it was just going to be a dash in, grab item, dash out.

We dash in. We look around for a few minutes in (not my usual) Kroger trying to figure out where exactly the baking goods are. We find the appropriate aisle and walk back, looking for various types of chips. We locate chips. We search through chips.

There are no cinnamon chips.

I feel mildly defeated.

We start to head out, and I pull out my phone and download the Kroger app, thinking that maybe they’ll have them at (my usual) Kroger 10 minutes down the road.

They don’t.

Amber says, “Maybe they’ll have them at one of the bougie ass grocery stores, like Publix?”

I reply, “Yeah, I’m already downloading their app to see if they do.” Oh, but Publix won’t let you check to see what’s in their stores without creating an account first. Great. Dicks. Account gets created and verified and all that bullshit is followed and I search the store just down the road from (my usual) Kroger and…

They don’t.

Great. Now it is looking like my dream of baking on a Saturday morning is almost dashed! I have an ace in the hole, though. Wegman’s! I download their app, sign in with the account I created years ago when the first store in the area opened in Midlothian (I still had never actually shopped at a Wegman’s) and checked the inventory for the store in Short Pump.

Success! Cinnamon chips! We get in the car and quickly head to Short Pump. By the way, I hate Short Pump. Also, if you’re ever going to the Wegman’s in Short Pump, make sure you get off an the 288 South exit and East on Broad Street to get there. You’ll thank me.

We get to the Wegman’s, and are immediately impressed. Prices don’t look too bad, either. Might have to try doing some grocery shopping there in the future, after doing some price comparison with ALDI, and we start heading back to aisle 12B. Having never stepped foot in a Wegman’s, I was very pleased that the app told me exactly where to find my item. Arriving at the allotted space for various types of baking morsels, we spy a loan bag of cinnamon chips.

This is the part in the story where I would love to tell you how someone else was after them, we both put our hands on the bag at the same time, a fight ensued, we ripped the bag, chips flew everywhere, and we both walked out disappointed. None of that happened. I picked up the bag, we looked at some cheesecake and picked up a lemon one (it was pretty good) paid and left.

Saturday Morning

I want to preface this by saying that my oven hates me. It is probably my fault. I complain about its size. The fact that the temperature isn’t calibrated properly, off by a full 25ºF (thank you over thermometer that I purchased years ago), the broiler doesn’t seem to broil very well. Look, it’s a piece of shit space saver range/over and it sucks. If I use more than one burner at a time then the pans get overheated by the burner next to them. Seriously, fuck that thing.

You know one thing I never bought that I should have? Parchment paper. We’re not going to discuss that, though, suffice it to say that the scones did not stick to my baking tray.

That over, though…

Ingredients are mixed. Dough is kneaded. Scones are cut into nice little triangles. They are placed on a baking tray. They are popped into the oven. I leave. I come back to check on them after about 7 minutes.

The oven is getting cooler. Shit.

Somehow, the over completely turned off after pre-heating. No pilot light, no flame on the burners, nothing. Just turned off. Have you ever tried to light a pilot light in an over when you need to remove both racks and then the burner cover and the oven is currently sitting somewhere around 350ºF? It is not the most fun thing in the world and resulted in a few, not very serious, burns. But I successfully got it relit. Not so successfully put all of the hot pieces of the oven back together, but it’s all in there.

I had to play around, figure out baking times, test test test, but finally, I had a finished product. They might have been a little under baked in the middle, and there were a few other things I didn’t like about them, but being a first effort, and with the problems with the oven, they came out pretty good overall. I just need to make them again without the oven issues.