Scones are a traditional English breakfast pastry, as I’m sure you well know. But for a long time, I have to admit, I didn’t. I often confused scones with biscotti, which I abhor, so I stayed away from the scone, assuming it was a dry, bland biscuit, only decent if dunked in coffee.

Oh, how wrong I was.

Scones, while they look dense, dry, and frankly, often unappealing, are deevine, if you do them right. The beauty of the scone is that it can take on any number of forms, depending on your taste or what ingredients you have on hand.

The cream scone uses heavy cream (or, half and half if you are a wussy), while the traditional scone uses only a little buttermilk as the liquid. Of course, I prefer the cream scone. Duh.

Also, if you are a real Englishman/woman (see how egalitarian I am), the scone will not be sweet – it will be more like what we Yanks call a biscuit. But that’s no fun, and we all know I have no problem bastardizing the foods of other countries and cultures to suit my own desires, so I’m only going to bother with the sweet, breakfast-y/coffee house sort of scones you see ’round these parts.

I like to make a batch of these beauties and throw them in a freezer bag for a rainy day. They’re a great grab-n-go breakfast for mornings on the run or mornings when your baby won’t let you put him down so you can’t cook bacon and eggs.

Here’s my favorite cream scone recipe, adapted from America’s Test Kitchen.

2.5 cups (10 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour
1 T baking powder
4 T sugar
1/2 tsp salt
6 T chilled, unsalted butter, diced
1 C dried cranberries
1 T orange zest
1 1/3 cup heavy cream (or half n half, if you are a wussy)

for glaze:

3/4 C powdered sugar
1 T orange zest
1/3 C orange juice, freshly squeezed

Step 1) Preheat your oven to 425 degrees.

Step 2) Note: For best results in any scone recipe, add wet ingredients to dry all at once.

So, combine all dry ingredients in your trusty food processor, and give them a few turns to combine.

Step 3) Add your hunks of butter to the food processor bowl. Try to distribute them evenly. Then pulse a dozen or so times. Don’t over mix! This is like biscuit dough, remember. Add your dried cranberries and pulse another time or two.

Step 3) Stir in the cream until dough forms.

Step 4) Move the dough to a floured surface and knead it just a little, until you get a good, sticky ball. This won’t take long. Again, DO NOT OVERWORK YOUR DOUGH.

Step 5) Press the dough into a round cake pan, and cut it into 8 wedges. Remove from the pan and transfer them to a cookie sheet.

Step 6) Bake for 13 or 14 minutes.

Step 7) While they’re still hot, drizzle with the glaze. Cool, and freeze if you so desire. Or, eat them all right then, while they’re hot and gorgeous.

Now, there are a lot of variations on this basic theme. You can skip the glaze (they’re sweet enough without it, but I like to add insult to injury). Or, you can do a basic icing, or a chocolate drizzle. Sprinkly powdered sugar on top, or crystallized sugar. Stud the tops with bits of dried fruit or mix in some nuts. Spell out your main sqeeze’s name in chocolate chips.

I really love to remove the orange from the recipe and sub in a little lemon zest, and then make up (or, buy) a batch of lemon curd and serve it with the scone and a smear of cream cheese. The real Euro-types will do clotted cream with their scones, which is also delish if you have it available.

I’m too lazy to make coffee at home, usually. I can get coffee at work, and the baristas of Lawrence do such a bang-up job, I usually don’t see the point of going to the effort to make what usually turns out to be sub-par coffee at home. That said, I have had to change my ways since I’ve been off work on maternity leave. I have been eating some pre-made scones almost every morning because I wake up ravenous and I don’t have time to cook breakfast, but a scone without coffee is like a Ryan Seacrest without the hair. It’s just incomplete. So I’ve had to learn to make a cup of coffee. A good one. And fast.

So here’s the deal. Use a french press. A) It doesn’t take up a bunch of space on your countertop, which was one of my major beefs about using my regular coffee maker. B) If you have a microwave, you can have your water hot enough in about 5 minutes. 4 minutes in the press, and you’ve got your cup of coffee in less than ten minutes. It’s easy to use, easy to clean, and makes really delicious coffee. I suggest you use a course grind on your beans (ya, grind your own beans – it’s worth it) or you’ll end up with a lot of sludge at the bottom of your coffee. Another benefit to the french press is that you can get a good Bodum one for about $30, as opposed to the approximate $150 you’d need to spend to get an electric brewer that will make a really good cup of coffee.

Another little suggestion, if you want to get really Martha about it: make a batch of the dry ingredients for the scones as a gift, and attach directions for putting the scones together. It’s way better than getting dry cookie dough ingredients, and fancier, too. If you put them in a cool bail top jar like this one (you can get them pretty cheap at Hobby Lobby, or at garage sales, usually). Add another jar full of your favorite ground beans, and it’s a gift I know I wouldn’t turn down.