Tender & Buttery Blackberry Scones

These tender, buttery blackberry scones are so simple to make, even my kids can bake them all by themselves... Substitute your favorite fresh or frozen berries to customize!

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I'm feeling like I'm a little late to the game, but Happy New Year! My kids are back in school, and I'm (finally) feeling like my schedule is getting back to normal. It's not the having them home part that's hard -- it's the constant "Mom, can you take me here?" and "Mom, can you run me there?" asks that throw everything out of whack. My oldest is turning 16 in March, and although I really HATE this whole teaching-them-to-drive thing, I am SO looking forward to the extra help in the chauffeuring department...

So here we are now, 11 days into 2018, and I'm just getting around to sharing some of our family resolutions -- although I hate to call them that. I feel like the minute you designate something as a "resolution", you're almost surely setting yourself up for failure. So let's just call them "standards", or even rules, because breaking them is NOT an option.

Like so many homes, our kitchen is the the hub of the household. When it's in disarray, I can feel everything else slipping, so we came up with some kitchen standards that will hopefully have a trickle down effect throughout the rest of our home.

1| Meal planning/prep -- I think I've already established that meal planning is not one of my strengths, but I think with some concerted effort I can at least get to somewhere in the middle. While this standard is mainly for me, I'm pretty sure there's room for my kids to help out.

2| Get my kids involved in cooking (more) -- My girls know their way around the kitchen pretty well and love to bake, but it's time to get my 3 boys to jump in more.

3| Clean up before all else -- Nothing starts my day off on the wrong foot more than coming downstairs to a kitchen piled high with dirty dishes and things out of place. Our new rule is that no one leaves after dinner until the kitchen is CLEAN, as in clean from top to bottom.

These are all a work in progress, but I'm feeling good about the headway we've made so far!

So what does this look like in practice? Well, here's a little behind-the-scenes from last evening...

Easing my boys into helping with dinner seems like the best strategy, so I put them in charge of preheating the oven and baking two packages of On-Cor 6 Breaded Chicken Parmagiana Patties with Tomato Sauce. They love these little lightly breaded chicken patties with a layer of real mozzarella cheese and savory tomato sauce, so these quality, multi-serve entrées make for a great incentive!

On-Cor has been bringing families together for dinner for more than 70 years, and they just recently enhanced their products and packaging. Now it's easier than ever to understand the nutrition and ingredients in each entrée. The chicken parmigiana, in particular, features white meat chicken and boasts 8 grams of protein per serving, and all entrées have no monosodium glutamate (MSG) added.

Once the chicken parmigiana was in the oven, the boys were also responsible for unloading the dishwasher and setting the table. Because, let's face it, heating up the oven is really NOT that difficult.

Once they were out of the way, I made a batch of these sautéed green beans as a side dish. I had already washed and trimmed the green beans during a free moment earlier in the day (meal prep bonus points!), so this took barely any time at all. They were the perfect pairing for our entrée, and since they're so quick to prepare, it left me free to help my girls do a little baking.

Blackberry Scones Recipe

After thumbing through their Baking with Kids cookbook earlier in the week, the girls were dying to try out the blackberry scones recipe. And it was a great choice -- it was at the perfect level for their developing skill set! I had already popped some fresh blackberries in the freezer earlier when I prepped the green beans (double meal prep bonus points!). And since dinner was already taken care of, I was able to demonstrate how to cut cold butter into dry ingredients and how to make an egg wash with my full attention.

It turns out that this particular blackberry scones recipe bakes at 375 degrees (same as the On-Cor 6 Breaded Chicken Parmagiana Patties with Tomato Sauce!). So we were able to time it so that both were finished baking at the same time. I could get used to still-warm fresh blackberry scones for dessert! But then I might need to buy some new pants, so maybe not...

We all absolutely adored the blackberries in this recipe. Tart and slightly sweet, they kind of melt into a warm jam inside the scones, which is really satisfying. I should mention (since the recipe didn't) that these scones spread a ton while baking, so leave plenty of room around each one. Four to a tray should do it!

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Tender & Buttery Blackberry Scones

Yield: 8 scones

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 35 minutes

These tender, buttery blackberry scones are so simple to make, even my kids can bake them all by themselves… Substitute your favorite fresh or frozen berries to customize!

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Ingredients

• 1 cup fresh or frozen blackberries
• 1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
• ½ cup white whole wheat flour
• ½ cup + 2 tablespoons sugar, divided
• 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ cup cold butter, cubed
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• ½ cup buttermilk

for the egg wash:

• 1 large egg
• 1 tablespoon water

Instructions

1. If using fresh berries, flash freeze them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper for about one hour or until the berries have hardened. If your berries are already frozen, skip to step 2.
2. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
3. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the all-purpose flour, white whole wheat flour, ½ cup of the sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
4. Sprinkle the cubed butter over the dry ingredients, and cut in with a pastry cutter until the dough is crumbly throughout.
5. Stir the vanilla extract into the buttermilk, then stir this mixture into the dry ingredients just until blended. Fold the frozen berries into the dough, being careful not to smash them. The dough will still be crumbly, which is okay. Do not over mix.
6. Lightly flour the work surface, and then turn the dough out onto it. Flatten the dough out into a circle that's about 1 ½ inches thick. Using a bench scraper or sharp knife, cut the dough into 8 wedges.
7. Place the scones on the prepared baking sheets, 4 to a sheet. Make the egg wash by mixing together the egg and water, and brush this mixture lightly on the top of each scone. Sprinkle the remaining sugar over the tops.
8. Bake at 375 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown. Cool for 5 minutes before serving.

Notes

Adapted from Baking with Kids. Copyright ©2015 by Leah Brooks. Published by Quarry Books, an imprint of the The Quarto Group.

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After finishing up dessert, we all pitched in to clean up the kitchen. Between the seven of us, we got it done in record time... Why haven't we been doing this all along? We even had time for a quick game of Monopoly, which my youngest has been begging to play for AGES.