It’s pronounced [skōn] because there’s an o in it.

I’ve been getting bored with having fried eggs and hrechka for breakfast every morning, and now that I know that I’m keeping my apartment, I decided to make some breakfast that would be worthy of a post. I like oatmeal, but it too has been getting boring. I started digging around on the internet and decided to bake something crispy and rich, and I stumbled upon a recipe for oat scones on Epicurious. Scone sounds really fancy, reminiscent of some foggy harbor in Ireland or Scotland. (For the record I do have a memory of eating scones in Ireland when I was 9.) However, they are actually extremely easy and fast to make. I had to do some adapting for Ukraine because we have no cream of tartar here (McGee informed me that baking soda reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar so I just threw in a 1/4 teaspoon of vinegar at the end). I think it turned out well.

Oat Scones with Raisins

When I say fast, I mean fast. I banged these puppies out in under half an hour. First I mixed the dry ingredients: a 1:1 mix of flour and oats (not the fast cooking kind), salt, a little sugar, and baking powder.

Next I mixed the wet ingredients. The recipe called for melted butter, and I was a bit skeptical of this as it goes against my instinct to cut butter into most baked goods. Also, my mother’s church (Quaker Meeting to be exact) potluck staple, a cheese scone, got all its flaky goodness from having the butter very carefully cut into the flour. However, I decided to risk it and mixed melted butter with milk and an egg. Then I mixed this into the dry ingredients and added a touch of vinegar and some good raisins I got from the Central Asian guy who sells dried fruit at the market and formed it into a nice round. It was looking a little greasy and I started to have my doubts about the melted butter, but I went ahead and cut it into wedges and arraigned them on a baking sheet.

They went into a hot oven for about 15 minutes, and despite my doubts they came out crusty with the oats and baking soda providing a light flaky texture. To top that, these things taste really good. They are pretty filling; I think one would be a good breakfast for a normal sized person (two for me). My only word of warning is that when one enjoys a wedge hot from the oven (definitely a good idea), one should be careful of the very hot raisin guts.