TWD: Buttermilk Scones

Scones are one of my favourite kind of baking-goods. I am really no gifted baker (although I practice since more than four years now. Four years! Unbelievable!). But I guess I have a bit of a "biscuit hand", what applies, I believe, also to scones. The bad I am at mastering cakes with creams and tartes, the better I am when it comes to "dry" things like shortbread, breakfast treats or easy-fast recipes like brownies. And cheesecakes. But that's another story, I am deviating, sorry. This should be about the fabulous Buttermilk Scones, and not about me :-)

So, Buttermilk Scones are a fast and easy recipe as most scones are. I like the buttermilk flavour and consider this to be on my top-3-scones recipe list. The basic dough can be combined with almost everything that goes with scones, I guess. I gave dried apricots a try (one of my all-time-favourite ingredients for scones). Baking time was a bit longer, more like 17 mins. And I didn't glaze them as I don't like them too much on the sweet side.

If you like scones - do them! They are as fast and easy that you can even do them before Sunday breakfast and end up with a wonderful treat in the morning.

For the recipe, have a look at Dorie Greenspan's book. And to see what the rest of the TWD-group made out of this simple, basic but nevertheless delicious recipe, visit the blog!

TWD. Chocolate Mascarpone Cheesecake

I adore cheesecakes, but am not such a huge fan of chocolate cheesecakes - maybe because I am not a big chocolate-lover in general. I always doubt that chocolate makes the sublime, wonderful taste of a cheesecake better. No need for improvement , in my view!

But I was willing to give this a try. What I do like is that is fast in the making, compared to other cheesecakes. There is no crust, so no pre-baking. Just cookie-crumbling, that's it.
Chilling is a bit longer and I doubt that leaving the cake in the fridge for more than one day (what I had to do) is good for the cookie bottom. It gets soggy.

The Chocolate Mascarpone Cheesecake is what it sounds like - a very rich, chocolatey cheesecake.
Next time, I would prefer to do the basic receipe without the chocolate part, but I am sure this is my personal trouble with chocolate ;-)

For everybody else I can just recommend to give it a try - it is fast, it is delicious, and the creamcheese/mascarpone-combo is heavenly!

For the recipe, have a look at Dorie Greenspans book on pp. 256-258 and to find out how other bakers liked the recipe, and what wonderful creations they made of it, see the "Leave your link" section on our TWD-group blog.

Update: ALL my colleagues LOVED this one. All. No exception. So, forget everything I sad about it and just do it, try it, enjoy it and ignore me chocolate-grinch :-)