Summer At It's Best: Homemade Strawberry Scones

Gluten Free Strawberry Scones

I am attempting to convince my dad to move to West Virginia. If you've read my blog for any given amount of time you will know that I don't talk about my dad often. It's not for a lack of devotion, but more about him being the only parent I have left. My mother died of brain cancer 2500 miles away from me when my oldest was 9 days old. She was only sick for about a year and I was pregnant almost the whole time. The reason I had my oldest son as young as I did was to try to make sure my mother met a grandchild before she became too ill. I strongly believe she lasted until he was born from sheer will power. My dad and I were always extremely close growing-up. He raised me as if I were a boy, we went to sports games, he taught me to throw a punch. I have never really been a girly girl thanks to him, but I am a very strong and opinionated adult woman. In January he went into kidney failure after refusing to go to the doctor for almost 20 years. He spent 2 months in the hospital 2500 miles away from me. I called him 3 times a day and all the hospital staff knew me by name from all my phone calls. He is now home and starting dialysis this week. Since my mother passed away he has lived by himself in an over priced one bedroom apartment. So everyday when I call him I remind him of how great my state is. Yesterday I finally felt a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel. I mentioned that he could take the train to Chicago and we could meet him and take the train all together the rest of the way. After a pause he said he would look into it. It's a start. My mother loved going to tea and most importantly delicious scones. Thinking of her I made a new recipe for Strawberry Scones from the May 2013 issue of Parade Magazine.

This recipe has 8 ingredients. I takes a total time of 30 minutes, 10 minutes of which is active and makes 8 servings. I did make a few changes to the original recipe. I made two batches of these, one gluten free and one regular. I found with both batches that they weren't very sweet. Now traditional scones are meant to not be very sweet. I am spoiled though and love a little bit of sugar in my scones since that is how my mother prepared them. If you are like me I would suggest doubling the amount of sugar to 6 tablespoons. Make sure to watch the scones, they will brown very quickly at the end and then start to burn on the bottom if you aren't careful. With the gluten free scones I would recommend adding even a little bit more sugar if you are using a gluten free all-purpose flour or better yet use coconut flour. Without the added sugar the gluten free scones had a slightly bitter taste. Finally, if you like lots of fruit in your scones I would double the amount of strawberries. I like my scones filled with strawberries so I added a lot more than the original recipe stated.

When these scones were slathered with homemade jam they were great. Without jam I found them a little low on fruit and the gluten free ones weren't sweet enough. If you eat them with jam they have the right amount of sugar though. My kids thought these were a little crumby since they had eggs. Traditional scones just have butter and heavy cream. I would consider these more of a biscuit.

For the recipe go to Strawberry Scones.