gluten free | Kaprise!

What a mouthful…. both literally and figuratively. Let me tell you… these scones? Amazing. Totally and utterly drool worthy… these are the scones that you drive an extra 15 miles to a different grocery store to get the right ingredients for. These are the scones that you get heart palpitations when you see someone else reaching for the last one that you wanted to add to your tummy (in addition to the 2 others you stored in there).

Forget the whole wheat thing… these are made of nuts. Nuts!!! This will change your life forever. I mentioned the recipe by Nom Nom Paleo, but being the nudge that I am, I had to tweak it. I couldn’t help it. Anyway – here is my recipe, just adapted a bit.

Hazelnut Almond Scones with Chunky Chocolate and Cherries, a mouthful in every way (Adapted from Nom Nom Paleo)

2 cups of finely ground almond flour (I used Bob’s Red Mill)
1 cup of finely ground hazelnut mean (I used Bob’s Red Mill)
1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
4 tablespoons of cold butter
2 large eggs (Did I ever tell you guys about the difference in egg size?)
2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons of honey
1 teaspoon of bourbon vanilla
2 – 3 ounces of good quality dark chocolate, smashed (because baking is all about stress relief)
1/4 cup of dried cherries (I chopped mine in half)

Preheat your oven to 335F (I know. It’s a weird number, but I promise it works)
In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, and a pinch of salt (I didn’t use any because I used a salted chocolate and salted butter, but this is totally your call).
In the dry ingredient bowl, grate the butter (using the chubby grater holes) into the dry mixture. I like to dip my butter into the flours and grate so that the grated butter doesn’t stick. You can also freeze the butter, but I normally just dip and grate.
Once the butter has been grated, crumble the dry ingredients with the butter. Make sure you have some chunky bits. Think the pea-sized bits you want when you make good fluffy biscuits.
In a smaller bowl, whisk together the eggs, vinegar, honey, and vanilla.
Make a well in the butter and flour mixture and pour in the wet ingredients.
Combine gently. Your mixture should be cohesive, but very wet.
Gently add the chocolate and cherries. (As I mentioned above, I smashed my chocolate bar. I also used closer to 2.5 ounces because I ate some before I added it to the bowl)
Portion out the dough into even balls and shape on a parchment lined sheet.I managed to make seven large scones, but you can just as easily make daintier ones.
Bake at 335F for 12 minutes before raising the temperature to 350 and rotating the pan. Bake at 350 for another 10 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Gobble them up!!!

Notes:

You will notice that the original recipe used baking soda, but I chose to use baking powder because the smell of the baking soda was unnerving to me. Baking soda and powder are basically the same, except baking powder has cream of tartar in it. For whatever chemical reason, baking powder does not have the same smell. I’m weird about smells… so this made a huge difference. Keep in mind, because baking powder does contain less baking soda (leavening agent), the dramatic rise and pouf of my scones is much less dramatic. However, barring your strange obsession with smell, feel free to use baking soda for the dramatic lift and the pillowier texture.
In the same vein, these scones are not light and fluffy… instead they are moist, a little heavier, and deliciously flavored.
I used a cup of hazelnut flour because I saw it at the store and I figured… why the hell not. It definitely adds a certain nutty flavor and luxuriousness to these scones, but you can also just use almond flour. Also… something important to note? Hazelnut flour smells TERRIBLE, but it bakes perfectly and it loses that strange smell. They turn into beautifully nutty scones.
I did try this recipe with 100% hazelnut flour and NO almond flour… they do not turn out the same because hazelnut flour is a great deal chunkier than almond flour. The resulting “scone” was more of a pile of semi-stuck together ground up hazelnuts. While it was delicious, they were not scone-like in nature.
I am pretty convinced the reason these scones are just so glorious is the quality of ingredients that are used. Most of the ingredients are on the pricier side, but well worth it. I think when you use truly good quality and well sourced ingredients, everything is bound to taste delicious. I’m not really sure why this comment is included, but it popped into my head so I’m leaving it.

My sister started eating a paleo diet about a year ago, and since has come up with these amazing new things to try. And while I have not switched my daily consumption of things much, I had included some of the new and interesting things my sister introduces me to. A few months back she came up to me and stuffed a spoonful of coconut oil into my mouth… And it tasted like sunshine. It was coconut!!! Well… since then I have been a bit obsessed with coconut. I drink coconut water after my runs, run coconut oil on my feet, and generally just like coconut anything.

I made shredded coconut cookies a few weeks ago, and then became obsessed with the idea of peach jam on the tops of the cookies. I’ve read a few dozen recipes on shredded coconut cookies, so I can’t honestly say where I got this recipe from. It’s an amalgamation of everything I’ve read… and most importantly I included the whole egg in the batter as opposed to just egg whites as many recipes call for. I find that using only the white or yolk of the egg is wasteful so I try to avoid recipes like that.

Toasty Coconut Jam Cookies (inspired from a bit of this and that all over the web)

2 1/2 cups of unsweetened coconut flakes*
1 egg, beaten
1/3 cup of sugar
1/4 cup of jam (I used a thick apricot jam)

If your coconut are large flakes like mine, run it through your food processor until it is a bit finer. I usually work in two batches. One I leave a little larger, and the other I zip in the food processor a little bit more for a finer grain. I measure my coconut after I’ve processed it.
In a bowl, stir together egg and sugar
Add coconut and stir until the egg/sugar mixture coats the coconut and forms a loose ball.
On a parchment sheet, arrange scoops of coconut. I use a tablespoon and pack the coconut into the spoon tightly before gently tapping the mound out on the cookie sheet.
Using a 1/4 teaspoon scoop, dollop jam onto the center of the coconut mounds
Bake at 350F for 20 minutes. My oven runs a bit hot, so I baked for 18 minutes.

These cookies keep well in the refrigerator for a week. I packaged mine in little cellophane bags and presented them to my grandmother a week ago. They are just soft and just sweet enough to be perfect for grandmothers that are health conscious like mine.

It also occurs to me, that a little chocolate covered almond tapped onto the top of the coconut mounds might be an excellent alternative to jam. However, I would bake the coconut mounds just a minute or two less to let the coconut whiteness contrast more beautifully with the almonds.

* Alternatively, you may use sweetened coconut but I find this often sickeningly sweet. Plus… who knows what sugar is added?! I’ve also seen unsweetened coconut in smaller flakes called “desiccated coconut” – for whatever reason I find that label so unpalatable. The coconut I purchase is from Fresh Market, and comes in larger flakes. It’s quite a bit too big, so I spin it in my food processor for a finer grit.