Forever-Ever?

Those lovely hydrangeas are from the bouquet I carried as Maid-of-Honor this Saturday. My good friend, who is now married, put together a beautiful wedding and reception. The pretty flowers are only one of many examples of her good taste.

But before we could all revel in love-for-forever, champagne drinks, and oysters - a lot of work was done. A bridesmaid's job is not always an easy one.

Wedding preparations began the night before with all the bridesmaid's at the bride's home. This included the arduous tasks of watching wedding reality television (Bridezilla for example), eating snacks, and picking out jewelry.

The next morning we started early. We had just enough time to take a sunny walk to coffee before the crazy day began. Her charmingly nervous father drove us all to have our hair transformed and faces made-up. Somehow this took about 3 hours, and by that time it was off to the church. From that point on it was our duty to make sure her dress never got in her way, and that all she had to worry about was professing her never-ending love to someone. By the way, wedding dresses are so big and heavy! So hard to handle!

Successfully, she looked gorgeous the whole time, they kissed, and drove off to their party in a Rolls Royce. The rest of us got to take a limo with a crazy-man driver who got lost going to the reception, but all was well and we watched the new couple walk in the room to the Top Gun theme song. We had a great party in their honor, and we even took it out to a karaoke bar after everyone ran the reception bar dry. The groom made a fantastic end of the night speech to his new wife at the bar (it ended in a 'wife' chant), and then, finally, I got to go to sleep.

We were running on our breakfast meal all day until we got to the reception that evening. My stomach made a big growl during the ceremony, I thought about eating my bouquet. Luckily I had thought this might happen, and came prepared to try to feed my fellow bridesmaids the best I could that morning. I love having something fresh baked in the morning, and I thought scones would be sturdy enough to make us last a little while without starving.

To make things easy, I made the dough the night before and froze the cut pieces on a baking sheet. In the morning I put the frozen scones straight into the oven. If you do this bake them a little bit longer than in the directions, mine were a bit doughy in the middle after 10-15 minutes. I also served these with an orange cream I made. I took chilled whipped cream and whisked it with orange curd I had made earlier in the week. It is delicious on warm scones.

If you are interested, this is a great article about what different ingredients and techniques play a role in making  a scone "perfect"

Lemon Poppy-Seed Apricot Scones

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen's posting of Cream Scones from America's Test Kitchen

2 c. Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

1 Tbsp baking powder

3 Tbsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

5 Tbsp chilled, unsalted butter cut into cubes

1/2 c. chopped dried apricots

1 Tbsp poppy seeds

zest of one lemon

1 c. heavy cream

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment. Place dry ingredients into food processor (or bowl to whisk) and combine well. Either pulse (about 12-1 second pulses), or cut in butter, until it looks like coarse meal. Stir in your flavor additions until just combined.  If using a processor, transfer mix to a large bowl. Stir in cream until the dough forms (mine needed a little drizzle of milk, the dough should be somewhat sticky). Turn out the dough, and any flour bits onto the counter. Knead the dough until it all comes together into a rough ball, do not knead longer than 10 seconds. Pat the dough into an eight-inch round, cut the circle into 6 triangles. You could also pat it into a rectangle and cut squares or circles, but I particularly like triangle shaped food. If you like, brush the tops with cream and sprinkle with turbindo sugar. Place scones on parchment lined baking sheet, and bake for 12-15 minutes until lightly browned on top and cooked all the way through. Cool for about 10 min. before eating. Remember, they are delicious with orange cream.