Queen Elizabeth's Drop Scones

I'm still on a high from the Royal Wedding - I love weddings, and it's 1000x better when the Royal Family is involved!  Especially when I dragged myself out of bed at 2:10am Pacific time, I'm going to savor every single moment!

I wanted to make scones for the occasion, but ran into a few problems:
1.  No cream (or even half and half) on hand.
2.  No fruit on hand (i.e. no blueberries, no currants, etc.)

Darn.

As I continued googling, I came across Simply Recipes again and noticed Elise posted a recipe in honor of the Royal Wedding.  The recipe was for Queen Elizabeth's Drop Scones.  A quick glance at the ingredients told me I had everything on hand.  As I looked closer, I realized the "scones" were really more like pancakes, but light, fluffy, airy pancakes.

I also had a hard time believing Queen Elizabeth actually whipped these up for President Eisenhower, but, that's how the story goes.

On Elise's original recipe, she provided the substitute for the cream of tartar and baking soda - just baking powder - which is what I used, since I never have cream of tartar.

Pancakes?  Scones?  English Muffins?  

Serve with butter and syrup.  Eat like a pancake.  They're so light, which I appreciate - it doesn't feel like a brick in my stomach after eating.  I'd definitely make these again.

A note on the batter - it seems really thick.  I didn't follow the instructions perfectly, so my batter may have been a bit too gluten-y, but I still managed to make a light, fluffy pancake.

Queen Elizabeth's Drop Scones from Simply Recipes

Ingredients:

• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda + 3 teaspoons cream of tartar OR 5 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup superfine sugar or 1/4 heaping cup white granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 cups milk, more if needed
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted.

Directions:

1.  Whisk together flour, baking soda, cream of tartar (or just baking powder), and salt in a large bowl.

2.  In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs and sugar.  Add most of the milk.

3.  Make a well in the middle of the flour mixture and pour in the egg/milk/sugar mixture.  Whisk until smooth, adding more milk until you get the right consistency - thin enough to spread in a pan, but not so thin that it would run.  Fold in melted butter.

4.  Heat a griddle or pan.  Lightly grease (I use cooking spray.)  Drop batter by the tablespoon to form pancakes.  When bubbles start to appear, about 2-3 minutes, flip over and cook the other side for about a minute, or lightly browned.

5.  Keep warm in the oven or eat as soon as possible.

SO FLUFFY!

Banana Bread

Three rapidly ripening bananas.  One rapidly frantic wannabe cook, who hasn't posted a recipe in a while because she hasn't had time to find something new to cook.

Thankfully the bananas forced themselves into the spotlight and I had to make something quick.  Enter banana bread!

Generally, my go to recipe for banana bread is from America's Test Kitchen's Family Baking Book.  Unfortunately, I did not have plain yogurt on hand, so I had to frantically google for a new recipe and came across this one from Simply Recipes via Smitten Kitchen.

While I love the ATK Banana Bread, this one was also delish because it isn't as sweet.  Cutting back on the sweetness made the banana bread so yummerific, especially since the bananas were already so dark they had to be overflowing with sugars.  It'll be hard to choose a winner, but if you have plain yogurt on hand, make the ATK version; if not, go with this one.  It's a winner either way.

I might suggest, however, baking for 50 minutes instead of 1 hour - I checked my bread at 55 minutes and it seemed a bit overdone around the edges.

Mmmmmmmm.  See those brown edges?  That's where it is overdone - definitely reduce the baking time.

Banana Bread from Elise at Simply Recipes

Ingredients:

• 3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed
• 1/3 cup melted butter (this is about 5 1/3 tablespoons, I just used six tablespoons.)
• 1 cup sugar (I used about 80% of one cup of sugar)
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• Pinch of salt
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

I just had to show off these two ingredients - three rapidly browning bananas, and one brand spanking new bottle of vanilla extract.  It smelled heavenly.  I'd highly recommend Trader Joe's vanilla extract (also available in alcohol free) - it's sooo much cheaper than McCormick's.

Directions:

1.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. 

2.  In a large bowl, smash your bananas - not necessarily into a fine paste, but into much smaller pieces.  I enjoy having the small chunks in my batter to keep the bread moist.

3.  Add melted butter into bananas.  Mix in sugar, egg, and vanilla.  Sprinkle the baking soda and salt.  Slowly combine.

4.  Add in the flour, stir slowly to combine.  Try not to overmix.  When the flour is combined, you are done!

5.  Grease a loaf pan.  Pour batter into pan and smooth the top.  Knock it against the counter a few times to make sure there are no air bubbles in the batter.

6.  Bake for 50 minutes - use a toothpick tester to check doneness starting at 40-45 minutes, depending on how hot your oven gets.

7.  Remove from oven, cool on a rack for five minutes.  

As you can see, I use Baker's Secret loaf pans.

8.  Remove from pan, continue cooling until ready to slice and serve.

All sliced up and ready to eat!