I wanted to make something sweet and tart, so I decided to make some white chocolate scones with some sort of tarter flavor added.

These were a hit at work, as with all my other scones (:P). This is definitely my go to recipe for scones, as it makes super moist scones.

Orange Cranberry White Chocolate Scones (adapted from allrecipes.com)

Ingredients:
1 Cup Sour Cream
1 tsp Baking Soda
4 Cups Flour
1 Cup Sugar
2 tsp Baking Powder
1/4 tsp Cream of Tartar
1 tsp Salt
1 Cup Butter
1 Egg
1/2 Tbsp Vanilla Extract
1/4 tsp Orange Extract
1/2 Cup White Chocolate
1/2 Cup Craisins
Directions:
1. Combine sour cream and baking soda, and set aside.
2. Preheat oven to 350F.
3. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, cream of tartar and salt.
4. Cut butter into flour mixture until combined.
5. Add sour cream mixture, egg, and the extracts, and mix until combined.
6. Stir in white chocolate chips and craisins.
7. Refrigerate dough for 30 minutes – 1 hour, until firm.
8. Remove from bowl and shape into desired shape and bake for 15 minutes (until bottom of the scone is golden-brown).
(Like this)

The fiance’s dad was requesting a melt-in-your-mouth cookies (back in July…this post is way-late), so I decided to make shortbread.

I was very pleased with Dorie Greenspan’s Espresso-Chocolate Shortbread Cookies (which I made as VIA-Chocolate Shortbread Cookies), so I decided to use another recipe of hers this time. These cookies weren’t as good as the other ones and were a little on the hard-side, but they were OK.

The original recipe was written with volume measurements, but I decided to weigh everything so that I know the recipe by weight.

Brown Sugar-Pecan Shortbread Cookies (adapted from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home To Yours)
Ingredients:
210g All-Purpose Flour
35g Cornstarch
1/4 tsp Salt
Pinch of Ground Nutmeg (original recipe calls for Ground Cloves, but I didn’t have any)
226g Unsalted Butter (at room temperature)
150g Light Brown Sugar
70g Finely Chopped Pecans (I ground mine in the food processor)
Directions:
1. Sift together flour, cornstarch, salt and nutmeg.
2. In a bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter and brown sugar on medium speed until very smooth, making sure not to over-beat.
3. Add dry ingredients and beat until flour is JUST incorporated.
4. Add pecans and mix by hand (to avoid over-beating).
5. Transfer dough into a gallon-size Ziploc bag.  Do not seal bag, and put the bag on a flat surface and roll the dough until it fills the bag to the zipper.  Make sure that the surface of both sides of the dough is even.  Seal the bag, pressing out as much air as possible and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
6. Position the racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat oven to 350F.
7. Remove dough from refrigerator.  Carefully remove dough as a sheet from the bag.  Using a ruler as a guide, cut the dough into 49 1.5-inch squares.  Transfer the squares to two parchment-lined baking sheets and prick each square twice with a fork.
8. Bake for 18-20 minutes, rotating the sheets from top to bottom, and front to back midway.

We had a big plan of using this fondue set from our white elephant party at work. It suggests to use a tea light candle, but coworker Davood deemed it not powerful enough and bought Sterno to use in its place. The Sterno ended up not fitting in the slot and coworker Tim decided to make this alternative from binder clips. Due to a potential fire hazard, we decided to just use a glass bowl!…:P