Romy's Baking and Cake Decorating

 My friend S was back from spending the Summer in Paris, and we'd planned to get together for coffee.  I wanted to bring something and decided on Lemon Blueberry Scones because I had exactly the right amount of blueberries in the house. This was only my second time making scones!  Years ago I made chocolate chip scones and remember the dough being super unwieldy, hard to shape and not fun.  I decided to try again using  this recipe  from Sally's Bake Blog. It calls for grated frozen butter and although a pain, it made all the difference.  It was taking forever to grate and hurting my arm when I realized pressing down hard on the butter made it go faster.  The last bits I had to cut into small pieces with a knife, so as not to grate my finger.  The rest of the process was easy, no mixer required. I used DIY buttermilk, because I didn't have heavy cream, and it worked fine.  To cut the individual scones, I floured the bench scraper thoroughly between cuts. This was helpful. I

Here is a Star Bread I made using home-made walnut & basil pesto, prosciutto and Kalamata olives. We grew the basil for the pesto in our garden. The bread was for the birthday party of a friend of R's.  The friend seemed very surprised that I brought something, and R told me later that the invitation specified "no gifts".  So, I felt a bit foolish in retrospect.  But the friend was very appreciative and many guests enjoyed it. This star bread always impresses people, even though it's much easier to make than it looks.   I changed the fillings in the  recipe  as well as used all-purpose flour and no wheat flour.