Recipe: Whole Wheat Raspberry Ricotta Scones (freeze ahead)

WHOLE WHEAT RASPBERRY RICOTTA SCONES



1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder, preferably aluminum-free
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon table salt
6 tablespoons (3 ounces) unsalted butter, chilled
1 cup (4 1/2 ounces) fresh raspberries
3/4 cup whole-milk ricotta
1/3 cup heavy (whipping) cream

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.

In the bottom of a large, widish bowl, whisk flours, baking powder, sugar, and salt together.

With a pastry blender: Add the butter (no need to chop it first if your blender is sturdy), and use the blender to cut the butter into the flour mixture until the biggest pieces are the size of small peas. Toss in the raspberries, and use the blender again to break them into half- and quarter-berry-sized chunks.

Or, without a pastry blender: Cut the butter into small pieces with a knife, and work the butter into the flour mixture with your fingertips until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Roughly chop the raspberries on a cutting board, and stir them into the butter-flour mixture.



After using either method: Using a flexible spatula, add the ricotta and heavy cream to the butter mixture and stir them in to form a dough. Then use your hands to knead the dough gently into an even mass, right in the bottom of the bowl. Don't fret if the raspberries get muddled and smudge up the dough. This is a pretty thing.



With as few movements as possible, transfer the dough to a well-floured counter or surface, flour the top of the dough, and pat it into a 7-inch square about 1-inch high. With a large knife, divide the dough into nine even squares. Transfer the scones to the prepared baking sheet with a spatula.

Bake the scones for about 15 minutes, until they are lightly golden at the edges. Cool them in the pan for a minute, then transfer them to a cooling rack. It's best to cool them about halfway before eating, so they can set a bit more. I know, way to be a big meanie, right?

COOKING NOTE:
The trickiest thing about these scones is the dampness of the dough. Yet that same trickiness yields something that seems impossibly moist for a scone and, especially, for a whole-wheat one. Remember to keep your counter and your hands well floured and you won't have any trouble getting the scones from bowl to counter to oven to belly-which, after all, is the whole point.

TO MAKE AHEAD:
Scones are always best the day they are baked. However, if you wish to get a lead on them, you can make and divide the dough, arrange the unbaked scones on your parchment-lined baking sheet, freeze them until firm, and transfer them to a freezer bag.
- Or, if you're prepping just 1 day in advance, cover the tray with plastic wrap and bake them the day you need them.
- If you're preparing them more than 1 day in advance, once they are frozen transfer them to a freezer bag or container. Bring them back to a parchment-lined sheet when you're ready to bake them. No need to defrost the frozen, unbaked scones-just add 2 to 3 minutes to your baking time.

ABOUT THE RECIPE:
"On my first Mother's Day, I decided I would host brunch for my husband's and my families. That morning, because I'm, well, me - someone who considers the constant monitoring of pantry staples exhausting, even though this always causes me trouble - I discovered that I was nearly out of the white flour I'd need for my scones. Also heavy cream. And, heck, even dried fruit. So I cobbled together my remaining white flour with whole wheat flour and ricotta and fresh raspberries. And here's the thing about scones and biscuits: If you try enough recipes, you realize that you're generally following some unspoken rules. Whole wheat flour isn't a friend to biscuity things, because it makes them too dense; ricotta would just be weird; any fruit added must be dried. If you added fresh fruit, such as berries, the dough might be too sticky, and in the oven maybe the berries would melt into pockets of jam, and maybe they'd look a little wild, with buckled indents from the cooked fruit and craggy shapes ... and ... Wait, what? Why is this a bad thing again? This is what I realized when I pulled them from the oven: Everything I thought would go wrong had gone really, really right. Raspberries plus ricotta plus whole wheat flour equaled everything I wanted out of a breakfast baked good, tucked neatly into a portable shape."

Makes 9 (2-inch) square scones
Used by permission to Recipelink.com from Random House
Adapted from source: The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman