478: Scones
Matthew:
I'm Matthew.
Molly:
Oh, I'm Molly.
Matthew:
And this is Spilled Milk, the show where we'd cook something delicious, eat it all and you can't have any.
Molly:
That's right. Today, well, actually, we're both going to eat some. We're having scones.
Matthew:
Well, sort of. I was all set to eat ... I record this show from my bed. I don't know if you or the listeners realize that, but you can tell probably by the intimate tone. I was going to eat a scone in bed because the other day or yesterday, I think yesterday was Sunday, today's Monday, although maybe Thursday when you're listening to this, but you can listen to it whenever you want, it's a podcast, I made some scones. There was one scone left and wife of the show, Laurie, said, "I'm going to set this scone aside, so you can eat it tomorrow." Then this morning when I went looking for the scone, it had been eaten.
Molly:
What kind of family do you have over there?
Matthew:
A family of thieves, of bounders.
Molly:
God, I'm horrified for you.
Matthew:
I don't even know who did it. It could have been teenager of the show, December. It could have been cat of the show, Mimi. It could have been a raccoon that's loose in our house.
Molly:
Wow.
Matthew:
Also it could have been wife of the show, Laurie, and probably was, but-
Molly:
Probably. Wow. Oh, my God, your marriage is on the rocks.
Matthew:
It is. Yeah, it's on the rocks, but these scones didn't have the texture of rocks as scone sometimes do, so we'll get to that.
Molly:
Oh, God. I read down through the agenda. Also wait a minute. I want to say that I was talking with one of our listeners one day last week.
Matthew:
Really?
Molly:
Yes, someone who took a workshop with me recently. We were having a one-on-one session on the old Zoom. Have you heard of it?
Matthew:
I've heard of it.
Molly:
She was asking me some questions about podcasting, but she asked if we script the show. I just want to say, to be extra clear, we do not script this show. What we do is we have an agenda. Usually one of us is in charge of "researching" the topic and then we write notes to self of the agenda, right?
Matthew:
I believe-
Molly:
Is that what you would say?
Matthew:
Yes, that's what I would say. I want to be clear that I think you're doing a new segment, it's called the Let's Peek Behind The Curtain.
Molly:
Some people call it BTS ...
Matthew:
BTS, of course.
Molly:
... which is also a Korean boy band.
Matthew:
Korean.
Molly:
What I wanted to say is, Matthew, I looked down the agenda and saw you, you seem very, very iffy on scones. I am not a fan of scones. I'm full on [crosstalk 00:02:36].
Matthew:
No, I'm excited. I want to be ... The idea of having an afternoon or cream tea with a scone and jam and clotted cream and a cup of tea, so appealing. Occasionally, I have had a scone that was really good but not often. I want to understand how to make and find the scones that will satisfy my scone fantasy.
Molly:
Well, this is interesting ... We're going to get there, whatever. It's not interesting yet, but it's-
Matthew:
Clearly we script this show. I don't see-
Molly:
It's so tight.
Matthew:
I understand why the listener was wondering about this because if you've listened this far to this episode, this could not sound more script, right?
Molly:
It is tight. Anyway, let's start off as we always do on the old Memory Lane, shall we?
Matthew:
Okay.
Molly:
No, I'm going to go first.
Matthew:
Yes, please.
Molly:
Scones and I go a long way back. I hope you've got on comfy shoes because we're going to walk way back on Memory Lane today.
Matthew:
I do have comfy shoes.
Molly:
The first scones I ever remember having were strangely enough in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma which is where I grew up, very far from the homeland of scones which we will get to in a minute. Anyway, but I went to this school that was not very far from this what we then called a health food store.
Matthew:
Sure
Molly:
Do you remember health food stores?
Matthew:
Absolutely, my parents would shop at Nature's in Portland, Oregon. I should ask my mom what things she used to get at Nature's because I don't remember eating a lot of "healthy food" growing up.
Molly:
Right? This one was called The Earth and it was on Western in Oklahoma City down like south of Shartel, I think. I once wrote a blogpost about my memory of The Earth which is a planet that has passed into oblivion.
Matthew:
Oh, man. Do you remember the Old Earth before humanity had to shoot off into a variety of warring space colonies?
Molly:
Oh, God.
Matthew:
I've heard the legends.
Molly:
Oh, my God.
Matthew:
I hear he was very wet.
Molly:
Oh, my God, I was trying to do a Battlestar Galactica reference, but I can't remember the names of any of the ... Oh, my God. There's Caprica which is the Earth ... Caprica is a loosely veiled Earth, really.
Matthew:
There are Cylons. What's one episode ...
Molly:
[crosstalk 00:05:13] or a colony.
Matthew:
... Edward James Olmos?
Molly:
I love that guy.
Matthew:
He's great. He's great in everything.
Molly:
Hold on. Let's get back to The Earth, okay?
Matthew:
Yes, let's get back, finally.
Molly:
I'm going to just read to you a little excerpt from a 10-year-old blogpost, more than 10 years old now, from this old blog called Orangette.
Matthew:
Now what made you decide to do this because usually if I start to read something from an old blogpost of yours, you flee to a space colony and never come back.
Molly:
Well, to be honest, I feel okay with this because when I cut and pasted the post into the agenda, I cut out all the things that embarrassed me.
Matthew:
Great. While you start reading, I'm just going to pull up the original.
Molly:
Great. All right. Here we go. This is from an old blogpost from March of 2010. "When I was growing up at my elementary school, it was near a health food store called The Earth. It was not a large place nor was it fancy. It was small and low ceilinged, lit with fluorescent tubes and lined with vitamins in brown bottles," Does this all sound familiar to you?
Matthew:
Absolutely, yes.
Molly:
"And beeswax, Chapstick and sesame bars in plastic wrappers and it smelled like lentil soup." I think I nailed health food store.
Matthew:
Yes, although I think there's more to the smell than that. There is a health food store smell. I wonder if anyone's done an experiment to determine exactly what the minimal components of that aroma are.
Molly:
You're right. There's a lot more going on in there.
Matthew:
I agree, lentil soup is part of it.
Molly:
Maybe that the listeners who are active on our subreddit would like to weigh in on what are the various aromas that make up health food store smell.
Matthew:
Maybe there's been an article about this. That subreddit by the way is reddit.com/r/EverythingSpilledMilk. Full of nice people talking about nice thing.
Molly:
God, it really is. It makes me believe that Earth was once a good place back when we lived there. I'm going to keep going. "There was a cafe at one end where they serve sandwiches and baked goods, and sometimes after my mother picked me up from school, she would take me there for a snack. It was pretty forward thinking of her, I now realized. Oklahoma City didn't and still doesn't have a lot of places like The Earth, places where you could buy natural cheeses or soy milk or jojoba shampoo." I had to leave that in just so I could say jojoba.
Matthew:
But now jojoba shampoo is available anywhere, right?
Molly:
Correct, but this was like 1987 or '88.
Matthew:
I totally know what you mean. I remember we had jojoba shampoo early, around that time too, I think.
Molly:
I remember thinking that it was going to do magic for me.
Matthew:
I remember my dad pronounced it jojoba, just to be a dad.
Molly:
Perfect. I'm going to go again. "Not that I cared so much about that stuff, what I cared about was the carob brownie they sold at the cafe and the bottle of lemon-flavored Crystal Geyser sparkling water I was allowed to wash it down with." This was the early days of Crystal Geyser.
Matthew:
Sure.
Molly:
"My mother, for her part, would get something similarly fine, a wholewheat scone with dried apricots. The Earth brought them in from a place called Lovelight bakery in the nearby town of Norman."
Matthew:
Home of The Flaming Lips.
Molly:
And also home of the University of Oklahoma, the Sooners. All right. "And my mother liked them so much that she would sometimes special order them a dozen at a time and stash them away in the freezer to be meted out over a number of weeks." Did I pronounce that right, meted?
Matthew:
I think so, yeah.
Molly:
"Unlike some wholewheat pastries-
Matthew:
It says freezer.
Molly:
"Unlike some wholewheat pastries, these weren't paperweights masquerading as food. They did taste delicately of wheat, but they were tender, fine-crumbed, even heading toward flaky, studded with tangy apricots." That was my first experience with scones is that there were these things that my mom would get at the health food store. I think I liked them, but then I think I really came to love scones a few years later when we were having Christmas with my father's side of the family, so my half-siblings. My half-sister, Lisa, who got at this point would have been like around 40 and was a very good baker and still is, she made and brought to Christmas gallon-sized Ziploc bags of eight different types of scones.
Matthew:
Wow.
Molly:
They were beautiful. They were cut, so they were triangular, but they were maybe half the size of a normal triangular scone ...
Matthew:
Sure.
Molly:
... so that you could have multiple of them in a given morning. She had made them all using one recipe that she had been given by a friend I believe and she called them Scottish scones. I make no claim to their authenticity. I will just say they were my sister's scone recipe.
Matthew:
It was like one dough mini scones.
Molly:
Correct. There was one that she had put like frozen raspberries in, one that had like currants and lemon zest, one that had candied ginger and lemon zest. There was one that was blueberry. Anyway, it seemed so magical to me. Anyway, she would just pull them out and warm them up. That whole Christmas holiday, the two or three days that we were together-
Matthew:
"We would pull them out and warm them up."
Molly:
We had delicious homemade scones every morning. After that, I was like, "I'm going to learn to make these," and they just seemed an obvious thing that everyone should love. Anyway, I published the recipe, which I adapted a little bit in A Homemade Life. The version that's in A Homemade Life, I think the batch makes eight scones. My sister made that same amount of dough into 12 scones.
Matthew:
Wife of the show, Laurie, mentioned to me that there's a scone recipe in A Homemade Life and suggested that maybe I should make that one before we taped this episode. I did not. Now I wish I had because wouldn't it have been funny if I said, "I made that recipe"?
Molly:
I almost suggested to you that you make it, but then I felt a little shy because I worried that you wouldn't tell me if you didn't like them.
Matthew:
That's true and also-
Molly:
Or that you'd lie to me and you'd be thinking that my scones are mediocre behind my back. I didn't want you making my scones.
Matthew:
Or I'd say, "Yeah, we definitely have a copy of your book around."
Molly:
I didn't want that to happen. You'll notice that when you ask me what scones to make, I just didn't reply.
Matthew:
Didn't reply, I just realized, but I went ahead and made some scones. It was fine.
Molly:
Hold on, Matthew, Memory Lane, your Memory Lane.
Matthew:
When I thought about scone Memory Lane, the one time I remember getting some scones that really wowed me was at the Regent Hotel in Bangkok where I think-
Molly:
Oh, my God, you are insufferable.
Matthew:
I think on two different occasions. Wife of the show, Laurie and I went to afternoon tea at the Regent Hotel in Bangkok which does a fantastic afternoon tea and I remember the scones being like warm and fluffy biscuity texture more than what I think of is crumbly scone texture. I don't know to what extent that would meet the expectations of someone who grew up in the UK, eating scones in the afternoon, but they sure were good. I think they were studded with currants probably.
Molly:
Sorry, I was just eating a scone while you were saying that. Well, this is really interesting. I think this sets us up for some real conflict later in the show. Listeners, stick around.
Matthew:
Because you hate the Regent Hotel.
Molly:
I do.
Matthew:
You're a partisan of the Oriental Hotel.
Molly:
How about we head straight into how we pronounce this word, Matthew?
Matthew:
Okay. This is going to be the conflict.
Molly:
No, the conflict is going to be about texture. Not about the hotel. I don't care about those hotels. I care about other hotels.
Matthew:
Which hotel do you care about the most?
Molly:
Oh, man.
Matthew:
For me, I'm going to have to say it's the Bates Motel. I stayed there one time. It was very memorable.
Molly:
I once stayed at this ... I think my favorite hotel experience ... Here's our new segment that we're doing in the middle of the show now called Hotels of Yore, Yon-
Matthew:
Hotels of Yore, that's what it's called. I like it. Wait, what did you say, "Of Yon"?
Molly:
I can't remember. I was speaking-
Matthew:
Hithers of Yon.
Molly:
Oh, my God. This is a really long story and I don't know what part of it is interesting. It's all interesting to me. It's my life, but anyway, when I was growing up, my parents became friends ... This is an Oklahoma. My parents became good friends with this man named Bill [Jenks 00:14:11] who was the conductor of a local chamber orchestra.
Matthew:
Sure.
Molly:
This is what you expect from an Oklahoma childhood, isn't it?
Matthew:
When you say a local chamber orchestra, you make it sound like you're a bunch of competing chamber orchestra.
Molly:
I don't think they were.
Matthew:
The competition got through.
Molly:
Bill Jenks was the conductor for the Oklahoma City Chamber Orchestra, and as a child, I was made to suffer through many chamber orchestra concerts at Christ's The King Church.
Matthew:
That sounds terrible.
Molly:
It was terrible.
Matthew:
Were you allowed to fall asleep at least?
Molly:
What I do remember is sitting in the sanctuary at this church where they would play and they had stained glass windows with the Stations of the Cross.
Matthew:
Sure.
Molly:
That was how I learned that part of the Bible.
Matthew:
Can I name all the Stations of the Cross? There's Tottenham Court Road, Cockfosters, Piccadilly Circus.
Molly:
Oh, my God. Matthew, I'm going to move on now, but anyway, Bill Jenks, he was newly married to a woman who was a harpist.
Matthew:
Of course, that makes sense.
Molly:
One summer, they were teaching at an arts camp for teenagers or something in Colorado and they had just had their first child. These were really close friends of my parents and just lovely human beings. My mom and I drove from Oklahoma City to Estes Park, Colorado where this camp was to visit them and to visit their baby daughter. They recommended that we stay or somehow we found this hotel nearby called The Baldpate Inn. I was adolescent. I don't think I was in middle school yet. My memories of it, I don't know, I think you would say that it was like a ski chalet style sort of, but anyway, all the rooms, it was my first time staying in a place where there were shared bathrooms. All the bathrooms were down the hall. We had a room with double beds. There were handmade quilts on the beds, and these were quite like Spartan, but everything you needed and nothing you didn't absolutely need.
Matthew:
I need to cautious you, the quilting segment is later in this show.
Molly:
Right, but anyway, I think there was a little sink in the corner and these beautiful wood bed frames with the quilt. It was lovely. The hotel every night served a soup and salad bar which to adolescent me was the dream dinner.
Matthew:
That does sound good.
Molly:
Right? Because I could have all the ranch dressing I wanted on iceberg lettuce and they always had this cornbread that was quite sweet. There was always chicken soup. That place was magical. When I think back on it, I think that it's one of my favorite hotel memories, even though a few years later, my parents had a massive argument while we were staying there and that was a terrible memory.
Matthew:
I'm glad it didn't ruin the original memory for you.
Molly:
Anyway. There's our Hotels of Yonder.
Matthew:
I'm going to share my Hotel of Yonder story on the segment next week.
Molly:
Great.
Matthew:
I'm 100% going to forget. It's fine.
Molly:
Do you see why I couldn't figure out what part of that story was interesting?
Matthew:
No, not at all. I say it's scone personally.
Molly:
I say scone too, but some people say scone.
Matthew:
Some people say scone, right?
Molly:
It rhymes with swan. There's a poem that I found on Wikipedia about the two different pronunciations. I shall now recite the poem. "I asked the maid, in a dulcet tone, to order me a buttered scone. The silly girl has been and gone and ordered me a buttered scon."
Matthew:
[inaudible 00:17:54].
Molly:
All right. Here, I've got some word history.
Matthew:
I love that.
Molly:
The Oxford English Dictionary reports that the word scone first appeared in 1513. Pretty cool, right?
Matthew:
Yeah, very cool.
Molly:
What I'm about to read when I read it on Wikipedia was initially so boring that I almost left it out of the agenda, but then it got better and I decided that I'm going to read the whole thing verbatim from Wikipedia.
Matthew:
This is what that advanced 30 seconds button on the podcast player is for. NO, I love word history and I'm excited for this.
Molly:
"The origin of the word scone is obscure and may derive from different sources. That is the classic Scottish scone, the Dutch schoonbrood or spoon bread, very similar to a drop scone and possibly other similarly named quick breads may have made their way onto the British tea table where their similar names merged into one."
Matthew:
Wow.
Molly:
"Thus scone may derive from the middle Dutch schoonbrood, fine white bread from schoon which means pure or clean and brood," I'm doing a terrible job with this, "bread or it may derive from the Scots Gaelic terms sgonn, meaning a shapeless mass or a large mouthful."
Matthew:
That's a good word.
Molly:
Right? Schoon. "The middle low German term schone, meaning fine bread, may have also played a role in the origination of this word, and if the explanation put forward by Sheila MacNiven Cameron is true, the word may also be based on the town of Scone in Scotland which is the ancient capital of Scotland, where Scottish monarchs were crowned and on whose Stone of Scone, the monarchs of the UK are still crowned today."
Matthew:
I did know about the Stone of Scone.
Molly:
My God, I love this. I would like to be crowned. I am actually choking on my own words. I'm so excited about being crowned on the Stone of Scone.
Matthew:
I was going to say, if you go to England, probably you can sit on the throne on top of the Stone. Probably, you can't. I had some questions about how British monarchs get crowned, but I have a feeling you're not going to know the answer either.
Molly:
You should watch The Crown.
Matthew:
We watched one episode of The Crown and it was depressing and we didn't watch any others.
Molly:
No, keep going. Keep going. It is depressing. Life is depressing sometimes, Matthew.
Matthew:
I know, but that doesn't mean a show has to be. Where's the fun king?
Molly:
No, I like to watch and listen sometimes to things that are depressing to-
Matthew:
Not feel so alone?
Molly:
No, to milk my emotions out, to express my emotions, like breast milk.
Matthew:
I get it. I love sad songs. The Queen's Gambit is pretty sad, but we've been enjoying that a lot.
Molly:
The Queen's Gambit is incredible.
Matthew:
It's so good.
Molly:
Wow, this show is out of control.
Matthew:
It's okay.
Molly:
If there's ever been a show that we're not scripted, it is this.
Matthew:
What is the difference between a scone and a biscuit? Now for the rest of the episode, every time I say scone, I'm going to wonder if I'm pronouncing it incorrectly.
Molly:
Scone or scone.
Matthew:
As I was making the scones that I made for this episode, which we will be getting to in another couple hours or so, I kept feeling like I was making a biscuit.
Molly:
Matthew, you're not wrong there. The basic ingredients are the same. The flour, the butter, the milk or cream, leavening, a little bit of salt, possibly sugar and the preparation is much the same, right? You mix together the dry ingredients. You or rub in the butter and then you add liquid. Both those are also rolled or padded and cut into shapes. They're both baked in an oven at least most of the time these days.
Matthew:
So that they're just eaten raw right off the cutting board.
Molly:
It's helpful to me to think about the differences in terms of both where they come from and also flavorings. For one thing, biscuits are an American thing. They originated in the States, whereas scones originated in Scotland and they are associated with British high tea. Difference in origin Scotland versus US and then the other thing is scones are almost always embellished with things to add flavor.
Matthew:
True.
Molly:
Fruits, nuts, oats or other grains, whereas biscuits, sure, sometimes people add like cheddar and scallion or whatever ...
Matthew:
That sounds good.
Molly:
... but when people think of a biscuit, I think people probably think of a plain biscuit, whereas when people think of a scone, I think that at least most of the people I know think of something that has an additional flavoring in it.
Matthew:
You're absolutely right. In addition to making homemade scones, we did a Starbucks run because I got a Starbucks card from work months ago and remember that I had it and so we went and picked up some scones and coffee beverages from this local coffee chain. We got the Starbucks Blueberry Scone which is exactly what you expect. It's neither great nor terrible, but it's going to be blue. The choices were blueberry or vanilla bean.
Molly:
Oh, no, I don't like that. I don't want a vanilla scone.
Matthew:
I don't like the vanilla bean one either, but the blueberry was fine.
Molly:
When I used to travel on planes back when we all used to sometimes travel on planes-
Matthew:
Back when we lived on the Old Earth.
Molly:
I used to sometimes get a scone at Starbucks at the airport, but otherwise, it's definitely not my preferred scone destination.
Matthew:
I got to say that probably my favorite thing about the Old Earth was the snacks.
Molly:
Oh, God, the snacks were so good on Old Earth. Do you remember soft serve?
Matthew:
I do remember soft serve.
Molly:
Oh, my God. It doesn't work in the gravity here.
Matthew:
Oh, no, you start to dispense it and it just curls up and floats away ...
Molly:
You have to get gravity with your mouth.
Matthew:
... because we have reverse gravity here. It's not zero gravity. It's just like anything you want just floats off into space like a helium balloon.
Molly:
Hold on. I'm going to say one more thing about the difference between scones and biscuits.
Matthew:
Please.
Molly:
The other thing is that biscuits are usually sturdy enough to stand up to gravy or to be dragged through a runny egg yolk on a plate.
Matthew:
It's about time somebody stood up to gravy.
Molly:
Whereas scones, they're not asked to perform the same feats.
Matthew:
But I do think of scones as sturdy.
Molly:
Scones are usually more crumbly. Even though they are, yes, sturdy, they're crumbly, whereas biscuits are sturdy and flaky.
Matthew:
Right.
Molly:
You know what I mean?
Matthew:
Yeah, I do know what you mean.
Molly:
Matthew, what shape of scone do you like? What do you look for in a shape of a scone?
Matthew:
I think of a stone as being wedge-shaped or triangular usually. I think the ones that we had at the Regent were more round and certainly had a round scone, but the ones that made it home were cut, I made a half recipe and so I cut them into quarters.
Molly:
It's interesting, when I was reading about these, I saw that commercially most scones that are sold in a bakery or whatever, are either round or sometimes hexagonal because if you're using a cookie cutter, you can imagine with a hexagon, it's more efficient, but it seems to me that I don't understand why all scones are not made the way that recipes have you make them at home which is you make a big disc and then you cut it into wedges like a pie, right? You don't waste any dough. I don't understand why anybody would ever use a cookie cutter on a scone.
Matthew:
This is pure speculation, but I imagine just in terms of efficiency, it might be faster to roll the dough out into a pan or a big rectangle and then go at it with a hexagonal cutter.
Molly:
That's true because especially if you're making like a huge batch of dough, you're not going to roll it out into a gigantic disc and cut it into gigantic wedges.
Matthew:
That's right. You really do a gigantic disc and cut it into 100 wedges, each one of which is like icicle-shaped.
Molly:
Oh, my God, I can't wait to visit this bakery.
Matthew:
Very fancy.
Molly:
I like a scone to be triangle-shaped personally. I think that also differentiates it from a biscuit because biscuits are almost never sold in triangles right?
Matthew:
No, but we do make triangular biscuits at home sometimes, particularly cornmeal biscuits.
Molly:
I didn't know you ever made cornmeal biscuits.
Matthew:
They're great with chili.
Molly:
Oh, God, that sounds great. Well, let's talk about texture because I think this is where stuff is going to get really heated, Matthew. I'm going to go first. I think that a scone should not flake the way that a biscuit does. A scone may have layers, but it should be more tender and crumbly than flaky. In general, I don't understand people's obsession with flaky pastry, whether it's biscuit or pie dough because the flakes themselves can sometimes be not very tender. I don't like that.
Matthew:
Biscuits flakes we're talking about?
Molly:
Biscuit flakes and pie dough flakes for that matter. I always prefer a tender shorter or more crumbly texture over a flaky texture.
Matthew:
I think I remember Shirley Corriher talking about how there's a tension between tender and flaky.
Molly:
I'm tender. I'm tender.
Matthew:
I think I might be flaky.
Molly:
Really?
Matthew:
Maybe.
Molly:
Oh, my God, then we're definitely not going to agree upon scones.
Matthew:
I don't know though. I think I may be ready to retract some of what I put on the agenda, but we'll see.
Molly:
I don't know what to think about the assertion that scones are dry because a scone is drier than a biscuit, but it shouldn't be dry. It shouldn't be unpleasantly dry, but yes, I don't want my scone to be as-
Matthew:
As moist as a biscuit?
Molly:
Yeah, I don't want that.
Matthew:
I understand. Should I talk about the scones that I made?
Molly:
Yes, talk about the scones you made.
Matthew:
I made oatmeal scones from Baking Illustrated, the Cook's Illustrated baking cookbook. When I was eating them, I was like, "These are pretty good," but then this morning when they were gone and I couldn't have one again, I was pretty disappointed and I'm going to make them again because actually they're really quite tasty and they're easy to make. You toast rolled oats in the oven which smells really good and you brown these oats and then you mix some of them into the scone dough and you press some of them on the top and bottom and then you glaze them with ... You hold back some of the liquid ingredients which are cream milk and egg and you use that to glaze the tops of the scones and then sprinkle them with sugar.
Matthew:
As I was sprinkling with sugar, I'm like, "This seems like a ton of sugar. These are going to be too sweet," but actually they were great. The flavor was really balanced. They were sweet but not too sweet and I think wife for the show, Laurie, found them to crumbly, but now that we've had this discussion about how scones are supposed to be crumbly and are supposed to have a different texture than biscuits, I really enjoyed it.
Molly:
It's interesting about the sweetness aspect. Was there very much sugar in the dough?
Matthew:
No, not very much, maybe a couple of tablespoons.
Molly:
I didn't pull out A Homemade Life to look at that recipe, but I think it has three tablespoons of sugar in the dough for eight or 12 scones. That's another thing that I tend to really like about scones is that they are a sweet breakfast pastry, but not very sweet, especially the ones that use oats. They also get this like natural oat-y sweetness that's, well, pretty much exactly the flavor I want in the morning personally.
Matthew:
It's not sweet like a Danish.
Molly:
Right.
Matthew:
You go to an event, a meeting or something and there's a bunch of Danishes out on a table.
Molly:
I don't like that.
Matthew:
They're never good. They're always too sweet. Let's pivot this episode. Let's have this be the episode where we really lay into meeting Danishes.
Molly:
That sounds like fun. I'm going to move on. I will say that I tend to like my scones with nothing on them. I might put butter on them, but I'm very happy with a plain scone. I think I just don't mind a little bit of dryness in my mouth. There you go.
Matthew:
I had mine with tea.
Molly:
Did you dunk it?
Matthew:
A wacky combination, I know. What's that? I did not dunk it and I didn't put any jam on it. It was just really good with tea.
Molly:
There are some scones that I had made that were on the lighter, I wouldn't say fluffy, but the lighter textural side. If you're into that, I would highly recommend this recipe that I put on Orangette in 2011. It's for oat scones from a bakery in Portland, Maine, Standard Baking Company. I remember that it has a lot of buttermilk in it. They're not as tender or as moist or as sweet as a muffin, but they are more moist than your average scone of the type that I've been describing here. You might check those out. We can link to it on the-
Matthew:
I'll look at them and see how they compare to the oat scones that I made from Baking Illustrated.
Molly:
How do you feel about wholewheat scones? Do they make it seem like punishment to you?
Matthew:
I don't know when the last time I had one was. It doesn't sound appealing, but on the other hand, there are a bunch of wholewheat things I like. We've been going through a large amount of frozen Chinese and Korean pancakes from Uwajimaya. One of our favorites is the wholewheat flat cake. It's just like a fluffy flaky pancake with a lot of wholewheat flour. It's so good. I think I had some bad wholewheat bread experiences and extrapolated from that unfairly. Obviously, if a wholewheat scone is good, then it's good.
Molly:
Well, there's this really sweet cookbook called Breakfast, Lunch, Tea that came out a long time ago, maybe 10 years ago, published by, I believe her name is Rose Carrani who's the founder of Rose Bakery in Paris and London. She does scones, I believe, with a cookie cutter like beautiful, perfect, round and tall scones. The recipe from that book that I really like best is for wholewheat date scones. That recipe is also on my blog, we'll link to it there too, but I really love-
Matthew:
Are you relaunching your blog? Is that what's going on here?
Molly:
I think what we're discovering here is that my blog specialized in a few choice baked goods, scones and banana bread, were my calling cards.
Matthew:
That sounds right.
Molly:
Anyway, we'll link to the wholewheat date scones from Breakfast, Lunch, Tea which, if you're open to it, I think is a great use of wholewheat and the wholewheat flavor is so good with dates. Oh, I love that. I love scones. I think that the saddest scone is a mass market American scone personally.
Matthew:
For sure.
Molly:
That is the saddest thing and that is super dry and terrible. I don't know. It makes me sad that so many don't ever get to experience scones other than that.
Matthew:
Now that was a good sales pitch.
Molly:
Thank you.
Matthew:
We have several scone recipes to link to in the episode description, all of which are from your blog, I think, right?
Molly:
Yes, unless we can also link to the Baking Illustrated one, I don't know.
Matthew:
I will take a look and see if that is online, not behind a paywall, so we will link to that as well.
Molly:
The recipe that's in A Homemade Life is also in ancient history on my blog.
Matthew:
Great.
Molly:
I think made with frozen strawberries which, oh, my God, is also delicious. It makes for a really messy like difficult to work with dough. Then you can imagine when it bakes, you've got like the biscuity the flavor of the scone dough and then these jammy pockets where the frozen raspberry has softened in the oven. Oh, my God, strawberry scone is unconventional and delicious.
Matthew:
Is the dough really sticky and also bleedy from strawberries?
Molly:
The dough is a disaster. It's like you put the strawberries in there, work it as little as possible and shove it in the oven.
Matthew:
I feel like every time I work with a really difficult dough, I feel like, "This is got be good. To be worth what my hands are going through right now. This is definitely going to bake up moist and crispy." I know scones aren't crispy, but-
Molly:
There is a great sales pitch for Difficult Doughs.
Matthew:
Difficult Doughs. Oh, wow. It's about time we write the Spilled Milk book and it's going to be called Difficult Doughs and it's going to be a metaphor for how we're difficult, but we're going to be talking about these doughs.
Molly:
Cool. Are we going to sell it on this planet or are we going to try to sell it to-
Matthew:
I do not think it would sell well on Earth personally, but-
Molly:
Because there's nobody living there anymore?
Matthew:
Because there's nobody living there anymore and also it's a bad idea, but in space, nobody knows what's a good book or not.
Molly:
That's true.
Matthew:
We're wiping the slate clean. We're starting over. We can sell Difficult Doughs.
Molly:
We can do hard things.
Matthew:
We can do hard things.
Molly:
Great. Here we go.
Matthew:
Difficult Dough, subtitled The Only Book In Space.
Molly:
All right, let's move on.
Matthew:
What else are you going to read?
Molly:
Let's move on to everybody's favorite new part of the show ...
Matthew:
Segments.
Molly:
... Segments. We should have called the Segments part of the show like Supremes.
Matthew:
Is it Supremes or Supremes?
Molly:
Well, it depends on how French you're feeling. No, we're not going to do that. We're going to call it Segments. All right, moving on to Spilled Mail.
Matthew:
Spilled Mail. We got an email from a listener, Liz, who with her permission, we're calling her Gin Fizz Liz. She wrote in about the word busticate, bustication, busticated, which I used on a recent episode, I don't know which one, and said, "I'm here to offer you a bit of etymology. This word has been around at least since the '90s when I heard my mother, a born and bred Midwesterner use it all the time. She was the type to not allow swearing in the house and even at her most angry or frustrated, she would shout things like, "I've got a multitude of things to do. Now, dang it. I always understood busticated to have a twinge of replacing a swear word edge to it but still silly enough not to be very serious. Instead of saying that a hilariously failed baking project was fucked up, it was busticated. Then Gin Fizz Liz and I did a little research together and found that people were saying busticated as far back as the nineteens to mean busted.
Molly:
Wow. I've got to start working on this.
Matthew:
Working on-
Molly:
Could I?
Matthew:
Incorporating busticated into your vocabulary?
Molly:
Do you think I could say it to my child when I catch her trying to get into the M&M'S or something that I told her she couldn't have? Do I go like, "You're busticated"?
Matthew:
I think it means more broken than caught in the act. I think you could say like, "That is so busticated."
Molly:
Man, my body feels pretty busticated today.
Matthew:
Oh, yeah. Tell me about it.
Molly:
Well, that was really interesting. Thanks, Gin Fizz Liz.
Matthew:
Let's move on to our next segment, Quilting.
Molly:
Oh, my God, I actually have a quilting update. I have been sewing the binding onto my quilt. That's the fabric that goes around the very edge that covers up the raw edges of the sandwich.
Matthew:
The raw edges of the sandwich.
Molly:
I have about one and a half sides left to sew and it's been super fun except last night, Ash and I ... We have a sectional sofa and we were watching some old Arrested Development, as one does and we were sewing, as one does while watching Arrested Development. Ash was like sitting way too close to me and wasn't giving me enough space to move my arms for my hand sewing.
Matthew:
Sure.
Molly:
My shoulder is a little busticated today, from my spouse just loving me too much and wanted to be too close to me while I sewed.
Matthew:
I know. Is that awkward when your spouse is cuddling up to you and you're like, "This is nice, but also could you move over there?"
Molly:
Yeah. No, I was like, "Ash, get the ..." Oh, God, I'm trying not to swear like Gin Fizz Liz's mom. It's really hard.
Matthew:
Right. "Get the floor out of here."
Molly:
Anyway, I think by the time we record another episode, I'm going to be done with this thing.
Matthew:
I'm excited. Do you think we're going to retire the Segment then because we've really experienced a proliferation of Segments and-
Molly:
We'll probably retire this one because, truth be told, I do one quilt every four years. We'll retire this one for a while.
Matthew:
But it will be back. It's going on hiatus and it will be back in 2025.
Molly:
Great. Let's move on to the next Segment, Cute Animals.
Matthew:
The Cute Animal of the Weak is the purple swamphen and we're going to link to a video of it.
Molly:
I was very surprised that you refer to this as cute. It's super pointy. It doesn't look very snuggly.
Matthew:
It's very pointy and gawky, but it has lovely coloring and plumage. I don't know what constitutes a plumage other than just like feathers, but I guess plumage is like sticky outy feathers?
Molly:
No, plumage is just another word for feathers.
Matthew:
Then it's got great plumage. I think it's a bird so ugly you got to love it, but also it's pretty.
Molly:
I love this description from Wikipedia. Would you read it?
Matthew:
Yeah. "The Western swamphen is a swamphen in the rail family Rallidae, one of the six species of purple swamphen. From the French name taleve sultane, it is also known as the sultana bird. This chicken-sized bird, with its large feet, bright plumage and red bill and frontal shield is easily recognizable in its native range."
Molly:
I love that frontal shield. It's like a flat forehead-like thing.
Matthew:
Flat forehead thing. That's the zoological term, the ornithological term. This bird is so stalky. It's not stocky, but stalky because like it has these long ass legs. I think the reason it came to my attention was someone posted a photo of a baby swamphen which is just a couple of long as chicken legs with a tiny bird on top of it and it's hilarious.
Molly:
Oh, my God, the baby ones are really cute. They've got black feathers and they're really fuzzy looking. Then they have this red patch on their heads. Anyway, I'm glad to know about the purple swamphen. I also love looking at the word on paper. It looks like a swamphen.
Matthew:
Swampin is another like fake swear word that Gin Fizz Liz's mom used to use. "Quit swampin around and ..." We're introducing a new Segment, well, sort of. This is a Segment that we invented a few weeks ago and we're totally unclear on what it was and so we're redefining it. This Segment is called Now But Wow.
Molly:
After some real conversation about what Now But Wow should be, we've decided that this is a segment on stuff we're into. Each week, Matthew and I each get to be into one thing here on Now But Wow. I also want to say, this is not an ad even though some of the things we'll recommend are probably products or things that you have to pay for.
Matthew:
Ready.
Molly:
My Now But Wow this week is an antiracist zine called Chinese Protest Recipes. This thing was made by somebody I first came across on Instagram. On Instagram, his handle is @thegodofcookery. His real name is Clarence Kwan and he's a chef and activist in Toronto. For one thing, on Instagram, he does an incredible job of unpacking and raising awareness of racism in the food world.
Matthew:
Sure.
Molly:
He does this while also posting delicious-looking Chinese food. It's a win-win on all levels. Anyway, Chinese Protest Recipes is the zine he put together that's available as a free download. We'll link to where you can get it. He asks that if you download it for free, you donate to Black Lives Matter and he's also selling a limited print run of it, which you can find out about through his Instagram handle. Go check it out, Chinese Protest Recipes. This thing is so beautifully designed. It's really like sexy and smart and I really love it. Go to @thegodofcookery on Instagram.
Matthew:
I'm going to download it. I'm going to donate. I'm going to cook from it.
Molly:
Awesome.
Matthew:
My Now But Wow this week is a podcast, it's on hiatus and possibly a defunct podcast, but because it's a podcast, you can go back and enjoy the whole thing. It is cohosted by a listener, Dara Wilson who, to be fair, I don't honestly know if she's still a listener of the show, but I know she has been in the past and we're friends on Twitter. The podcast is called Money Haha and that's cohosted with Yasmine Khan. I would describe it as a comedy podcast about personal finance which the concept could not possibly appeal to me more. They have on hilarious comedians like Carl Tart and Heather Anne Campbell and they talk about real shit and money and money problems, but it's also hilarious.
Matthew:
Dara is one of the funniest people and she is currently producing a women-fronted online comedy night called Amazonians that we will also link to that is currently ongoing but will link to the podcast. It's called Money Haha. You can find it in your podcast player and I highly recommend it.
Molly:
Awesome. I'm so glad to know about it. I just want to say the podcast name, Money Haha all the time now.
Matthew:
It is a great name. It's way better than ours.
Molly:
When I go work on my budget later today, the whole time, I'm going to be like, "Money haha."
Matthew:
Check that out. All right, we should probably wrap this show up. What do you think?
Molly:
Oh, my God, what is this, an hour and a half?
Matthew:
It only feels that way because we're in space and time dilation.
Molly:
Great.
Matthew:
That's a thing, right? Our producer is Abby Cerquitella. You can find us online at spilledmilkpodcast.com and Reddit, reddit.com/r/EverythingSpilledMilk. Is there anything else we need to tell people? I doubt it.
Molly:
Probably not. No, we asked them for something on the subreddit, but I don't remember what it was. Hopefully, they do.
Matthew:
Until next time, thank you for listening to Spilled Milk, the only podcast in space.
Molly:
I'm Molly Wizenberg.
Matthew:
And Matthew Amster-Burton. All right.