White Chocolate & Sour Cherry Scones

The year was 1999 and my first book had come out and was nominated for one of those terribly-important cookbook awards. During the dinner and awards presentation, everyone thought I was a shoe-in and so I was seated right up in front, sharing a table with Graham Kerr, Claudia Rodin, some woman from Sweden (I had no idea who she was; the only Swedish women I’ve committed to memory are the ladies of Abba, I’m afraid)—and, gulp, Julia Child.

It was nice to be considered, but the real reason I wanted to win was because Alice Medrich was presenting the award in my category and I quickly thought of something that I wanted to say about her. When I was starting out as a baker, I used to step into her shop, Cocolat in Berkeley, on my way to work and get a truffle or a wedge of cake, which I would devour before beginning my own baking shift. And I credit her for introducing me, and a lot of other Americans, to the pleasures of fine chocolate.

Unfortunately I didn’t win and the following year, I was relegated to the rear of the room, back with rest of the riff-raff.

But sour grapes do not make a good sorbet, although sour cherries do make an excellent addition to scones. I’ve been meaning to do a recipe from Alice’s amazing book, Pure Dessert, and when I saw her scone recipe which combines rustic buckwheat and crunchy cornmeal, I knew it’d be a perfect vehicle for not just the cherries, but for rough-cut chunks of white chocolate, too.

Like all of Alice’s treats, this one relies on a few ingredients, is easy-to-prepare, but with results that are always better than the sum of their parts. And this one is a winner.

(Unlike me.)

And speaking of sour, last week while at the health food store, I was craving tofu (after my week-long chocolate tour, can you blame me?) I spotted low-fat organic milk and decided right there that it was time to make the switch. The milk is only, like, 80 centimes more than regular milk and why not contribute to the cause when and where I can?

Okay, well…I found a reason. When I opened the bottle, this big ol’ wad of cream was blocking the top, which pretty much nullified any benefits of its demi-écrémé designation. And even though I shook the life out of it before I added it to my morning café au lait, when I poured it in, it curdled into a zillion tiny little bits. And take it from me, peering into a brown bowl of steaming-brown liquid teeming with curdled fragments of milk fat bobbing on the surface is the last thing you want to face first thing in the morning.

Being Monsieur McFrugal, I decide to use it for making these scones, and they came out great. And I guess tips them towards the ‘healthy’ category. Which is a good thing, because I made these twice this week and ate almost both batches all by myself. I would’ve handed them out to friends, but I don’t know the word for scones in French, nor do I know how to describe them.

So that’s my excuse. And I’m sticking to it.