Sunday Mimosa Brunch

Every so often my friends and I come up with a bright idea for a themed party. Most of them revolve around food and wine. There have been so many of these bright ideas that I now have a list in the back of my planner. Perhaps it's a bucket list of sorts before I turn 30.

This weekend we crossed one of the items off the list, the Sunday Mimosa Brunch. The idea came out of a wine tasting about a month ago as we tasted some delicious sparkling wines and heralded the virtues of a good bubbly.

If there's one thing better than a good mimosa and some hearty egg dish on a Sunday morning, it's sharing it with good company.

The best thing about a brunch party is that most of the dishes you can make the night before. I whipped up the Paula Deen hashbrown casserole and the Tyler Florence blueberry scones (both things I mastered before). So Sunday morning I merely rolled out of bed, made a few last minute preparations and then hit the mimosas. My friends brought an assortment of quiche, pound cake and little toasts with salmon and cucumbers. It was all delicious.

And what better entertainment for a ladies Sunday brunch then dreaming up the next party. We probably added a half dozen items to the pre-30 bucket list of food and wine fun during the party alone. Next up, a paella party at the beach. Stay tuned ...

Scones, revisited

So a few years ago I picked up this little scone habit.

I don't remember quite how it started. A friend of mine in high school seemed to eat them a lot. Then I started buying them at Starbucks with my Americano nearly every morning.

But after a while those dollars add up, and one tires of the hard, frozen and over processed taste of the Starbucks pastries.

I figured I might as well just start making them.

Thus opened the door to my scone obsession.

I started with a blueberry scone with lemon glaze, courtesy of Tyler Florence. I then moved on to create my own cinnamon scone recipe, determined to get a one up on Starbucks. I tried raspberry, peach, peppermint chocolate. Some Sundays I just set up my own little scone test kitchen and baked all morning.

As with many obsessions, this one turned out to be somewhat passing. At some point, I tired of making scones every Sunday and their creation in my kitchen became more and more infrequent.

But apparently the memory of the scones still lingers, particularly in the mind of the locally famous weatherman who works at the TV station in our building. A few weeks ago he reminded me how much he loved the blueberry scones, so I promised to make some for him.

So that's what I did Sunday. I dug out the original Tyler Florence blueberry scone recipe that started it all.

One thing about these scones: they're more like biscuits. Or the really, really fresh scones you get at some independent bakeries. They're moist, not hard. My British friend actually said he liked them better than the traditional scone you find at stores (now that's an endorsement).

And a note on the recipe: You might want to try your own luck coming up with the lemon glaze topping. I find that if you follow Tyler's instructions, the glaze is really runny and watery. I like mine thicker, so tend to just melt the butter, use less lemon juice and then add in the confectioners sugar until I reach the desired consistency.

I forgot all of this however, and went with Tyler's method. I ended up adding a ton of confectioners sugar to thicken it up, and then had a serious glaze surplus.

So I went with the obvious solution. I made an Ina Garten pound cake to soak up the rest of it. This worked out well since I had all of the ingredients in my kitchen except for the buttermilk, but found recipes on line for a substitute that involved about 3 tablespoons of lemon juice to three quarters a cup of milk.

And that was the culmination of my Sunday morning baking. Who knows, maybe this will jump start another scone revolution and I'll end up sharing my recipe for the cinnamon ones ...