Three Pepper Goat Cheese, Bacon, & Tomato Scones

Recipe inspired by Mary Cech’s cookbook, Savory Baking, Copyright 2009.

Yield: Makes 7 large scones

Ingredients
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
¾ cups whole wheat flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 ¼ teaspoons sea salt (finely ground)
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold and cut into ½-inch cubes
1 medium tomato, roughly chopped
4 ounces three pepper goat cheese, broken into large walnut-size pieces
10 strips smoked bacon fried, cooled and then coarsely chopped
6 ounces whole plain yogurt*
Fresh rosemary, one sprig denuded of its heady herb
2 tablespoons milk, plus more for brushing**

Recipe
1) Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Instead of parchment paper, I doused my baking pans with olive oil and then smeared the yellow-green goodness across the baking sheet with a paper towel. Either way works, though the parchment paper route is easier to clean post-baking. I will, however, endorse the taste of the olive oil on the bottom of the scone. These scones were made for olive oil.
2) Put the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt into a medium-large bowl and stir the contents.
3) Add the butter and break it into eraser-tip-size pieces with your fingertips until the dry ingredients and butter are evenly distributed. Hint: Don’t overdo this as you’ll ruin the tender-making-scone properties of cold, unsalted butter.
4) Sprinkle the tomato, crumbled goat cheese, bacon and rosemary over the top of the flour mixture and gently toss together, being careful not to obliterate the goat cheese chunks. You’ll ruin the fun of biting into a warm chunk of goat cheese enveloped in a savory scone.
5) Soften the yogurt by whisking in two tablespoons of milk. Pour the yogurt over the flour mixture and gently blend everything together with a plastic spatula, again being protective and respectful of the goat-cheese chunks.
6) Depending on how sandy looking the mixture is, you may need to add 2-4 tablespoons more of milk to ensure a moist scone.
7) Divide the dough into seven or eight equal mounds on the baking sheets, leaving about 1 inch between each scone.
8) Brush the tops of the scones with a little milk.
9) Place the baking sheet in the center of the oven and bake for about 20 minutes until lightly brown.
10) Remove scones from the oven and transfer to a cooling rack. Serve warm and enjoy!

Hugs and high fives,
Kella

*When I baked these Easter morning I used one container of Stonyfield Organic French Vanilla with Cream Top yogurt since that’s what I had in the refrigerator. The scones still tasted every bit as savory and moist as I imagined plain yogurt would yield.

**Mary Cech recommends whole milk, and I normally would too, but again, I had 1 percent in the fridge, and the scones were still fan-freakin’-tastic.