Strawberry scones

We went strawberry picking the other day, which could possibly be my definition of heaven. After eating more than I ended up paying for in the tupperwares, I came home with oodles of strawberries. What to do? I was too full of fresh strawberries to want to eat any more of them, so strawberry scones it was. Alex and Jackie were over, and between four of us, we devoured the whole recipe in oh, 14 seconds flat.

There was a near disaster when I forgot to add the sugar, but Jackie came up with an ingenious way of coating the tops with sugar and broiling it so that you get this crunchy, sugary, coating on top, and it was awesome. so:

1/2c milk (skim worked fine)
1 egg
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2tsp salt
1/2 stick (4 tbs) unsalted butter, frozen
2 Tbs sugar
3/4C strawberries, chopped

Put a cheese grater in the freezer. No, seriously. One with the big holes, if possible. Preheat your oven to 425 F.

In a big bowl, add flour, baking powder, salt, and 2 tbs sugar, and mix really well. Take the frozen butter and using your frozen cheese grater, grate it into the flour. Once you've grated half a stick of butter into the flour, use your fingertips to rub it into the flour, until its sort of crumbly looking. Don't do this too much.

In a separate bowl, mix the egg and milk, and then dump it into the dry ingredients. Mix it in, using the least number of strokes as possible. It'll be pretty dry.

Dump the mixture out on a floured table, knead no more than 12 times if its really not at all together, and form into one or two circles. Cut these up into wedges, and bake for ~10 minutes, until not quite golden. Here is the important part--when the scones are almost golden brown, take them out and sprinkle a thick layer (~1 tsp) of granulated sugar on top of each one. Then set your oven on broil, and broil the scones until the sugar layer on top has melted into a solid caramel-ish layer. Cool them as long as you can possibly wait, and then devour!

Sorry no pictures, we ate them too fast. Then I made two more batches the next day, and again, they disappeared too fast to take a picture. huh.