Happy Birthday Rory!

Monday we celebrated Rory's 4th birthday. As he likes to tell people, "I went to bed 3 and when I woke up.....I was 4!"

Traditionally in my family, you got to pick your birthday dinner. There were a lot of birthdays celebrated in my home, but I always remember stories of my older brother, Jim, and how he loved train cakes as a young boy. Following that tradition, I make train cakes for my boys.

I also asked Rory what he would like for breakfast. He chose scones (I was going to make them anyway- he's a mind-reader, and there was a picture of them on the table when I asked...)

So I give you Rory's birthday menu:

For breakfast, classic cream scones with currants.

Dinner: Rigatoni with Steak c/o Giada di Laurentiis with a little help from yours truly.

Classic Cream Scones

Yields 8 large scones.

These plump, moist scones are rich and subtly sweet. You can have a batch of them ready in the oven in 10 minutes. I have yet to discover or develop a better recipe for scones. While being moist enough, these have the dry crumbly texture you would expect from a scone. This in NOT a muffin or a piece of cake- it's a SCONE! Try this- you will love it.

Ingredients:

- 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

- 1/3 cup sugar

- 1 Tbs. baking powder

- 1/2 tsp. salt

- 1/2 cup dried currants (optional) AND dried blueberries are an EXCELLENT substitute

- 6 Tbs cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes

- 3/4 cup heavy cream

- 2 large egg yolks, lightly beaten

- 1 large egg, lightly beaten wt 1 Tbs milk for glazing (omit milk if you want a darker brown)

- granulated sugar for sprinkling (optional)

Here we go: Technique

Position an oven rack in the lower third of your oven and heat to 400. Line heavy baking sheet with parchment. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Add the currants, tossing until evenly distributed and coated with flour. Cut in the butter with pastry blender or with 2 knives, or you can even pulse briefly in a food processor. The butter will be pea-size when done. NOTE: At this point, I put the FP bowl back in the fridge to get cold again. WHY? When you touch the butter, the heat from your hands starts to melt it. The secret to delicious scones, flaky biscuits and pie crusts, puff pastry...is COLD BUTTER. Cold butter creates pockets of steam in the cooking process which helps your achieve your flaky buttery deliciousness with certain baked goods. When I want to prep these scones the night before, I assemble the ingredients and let them chill overnight.

In a small bowl, stir the cream and egg yolks just to blend. Add this all at once to the flour mixture. Stir with a fork to begin combining the wet and dry ingredients and then use your hands to gently knead the mixture together until all the dry ingredients are absorbed into the dough. Gather into a moist shaggy ball. DO NOT OVERKNEAD. Trust me here. Bring the dough together a few large fistfulls at a time and then merge them all together but don't make pizza dough out of this because you're going to melt that butter with your sweaty hands! Gather it together as best you can and don't sweat the little crumbs. The dough is sticky but benefits from minimal handling.

Set the rough ball in the center of the prepared baking sheet and pat it gently into a round, about 1 inch thick, 7 inches in diameter. The dough should behave well for you, it just might not look as pretty as you think it should. Do not judge a dough ball by it's appearance! Don't be tempted to make the round any flatter.

With a sharp knife or pastry scraper, cut the round into 8 wedges. Separate the wedges. Brush the scones with the egg-milk glaze. I omitted the milk which accounts for the dark exterior- that's how I like them. Don't use all that glaze btw.....add the rest to your eggs later. Sprinkle the scones with some sugar if you like.

Bake until the scones are deep golden and a toothpick inserted into the center of a wedge comes out clean, 18-22 min. Start checking at 18 min. Mine take about 21 min. Yes, I am precise when it comes to these things. The scone is sacred in this Irish family.

Let the scones cool on a rack for about 15 min. before serving. These are great with fresh butter or lemon curd- I've tried both (not together) and like them- it just depends on what mood I'm in.

This recipe doubles beautifully.