St. Valentine's Day Countdown (1)

Today I'm sharing a scone recipe that, while still a bit of a work in progress, I thought would be a good choice for our theme this week.  But first, I thought I would share about my day...today is my birthday!  For my present I got a snow day :).  I love snow, but I will admit, today's load was a bit much for me.  Here is the view from my front door after I shoveled:

I went out on my back deck to get some of the snow off, and here is the view out back:

So, what did I decide to do on my day off (post-shoveling)--try a new recipe for scones!

I was snowed in, so I used ingredients I had in the house, which did not include cream, and cream scones are my go to scone recipe.  I found the recipe below (though the recipe includes my tweaks) which was cream free.  Overall the recipe turned out really well, except I couldn't get the bake temperature/time perfect.

Chocolate Chip Orange Scones

2 cups all-purpose flour
heaping 1/3 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 stick butter, chilled
2 large eggs
1/4 cup fresh squeezed orange juice
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp grated orange zest
3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips*

Preheat oven to 400.  In a large bowl, stir together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.  Cut in the butter until resembles course crumbs.  In a small bowl, stir together eggs, orange juice, vanilla extract, and orange zest.  Add egg mixture to flour mixture and stir to combine.  Flour hands and work in the chocolate chips and distribute evenly.

With lightly floured hands, take a portion of the batter.  Work flour into the batter until less sticky and able to use a floured cookie cutter.  Cut out with a heart shaped cutter (In my case, one of the ones from my post earlier this week!) and place on a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Cook for 10 minutes at 400.**  Serve with cherry jam.

*I might use milk chocolate chips next time I bake these because the scones were not as sweet as I like, but I will admit the semi-sweet chips give them more of a dark chocolate taste.
**As I mentioned before, I had a hard time with the bake time.  The scones with the cutter were much smaller than the recipe called for, and the recipe cooked them at 425.  I think next time I might try at 375 for 14 minutes and see how that turns out.