Chocolate Chunk Scones

Recently I've been in kind of a cooking slump. I'm just not interested in cooking the food that I have to eat every day. This sounds a little strange, but if you think about it, most of what you see on food blogs is the exciting stuff. You don't usually read about the quick and dirty meals that people make for dinner. If I cook up some chicken and toss some salsa in it for flavor, I don't write about that; but honestly, I don't even want to do the easy stuff if it takes more than 10 minutes. I hate cooking because I have to. When I feel like I have to cook, I lose my inspiration, and don't even feel like looking for more exciting recipes to make.

Now that I'm done complaining about that, I can happily say that I'm not in a baking slump. Often, baking and dessert-making is what saves me when I feel like this. I love breakfast and I love dessert, and I've got lots of recipes saved that I'm going to make eventually.

Yesterday as we drove home from work, I decided that I wanted to make Chocolate Chunk Scones for breakfast. They just sounded good. It also happens that I never buy chocolate chunks, but I still hadn't used some that my friend Karen gave to me when she moved. I was excited about the prospect of fluffy scones with huge pockets of melty chocolate.

I looked around for a new recipe, but I decided to go ahead and try the one that I linked to above. I'd made this recipe before and was unimpressed for a few reasons. First was that I was using an old copy of the recipe that called for egg wash [fussy] and cinnamon sugar [unnecessary]; those elements have been removed from the recipe. The second reason I was unimpressed was the unneeded addition of dried fruit to a chocolate chip scone. If I want a chocolate chip scone, I don't want anything else in it! [Unless they happen to be Pecan and Chocolate Chip Scones, which were mega-delicious.]

I decided to give the recipe a second try and omit the dried fruit, substituting in an additional half cup of chocolate chunks for the dried cranberries. I also included a small of white whole wheat flour with the regular flour. I made sour milk as I usually do in place of buttermilk, and brushed the tops of the scones with milk before putting them in the oven. They were done at 15 minutes.

Chocolate Chunk Scones

I really enjoyed these this time, without the unnecessary complications of fruit and cinnamon sugar. The scones were soft and fluffy, and puffed up a little more than I expected. The chocolate chunks and melted and spread out a little in places, making for great big bites of warm chocolate. I may always use chocolate chunks instead of chocolate chips in scones. The only downside was that these scones didn't brown much on top - they're a little pale. Pale, but tasty. I'm glad I tried this recipe again, because now I can say that it's good as long as you leave out the fruit.