Let’s start with the scones themselves.

They’re insanely delicious affairs, toasty and crumbly on the outside, moist and delectable on the inside.

An apricot chocolate chip scone warm from the oven, for example, tastes like a treat you’d expect to find in the case at a pastry shop or neighborhood bakery, or appearing as part of a lavish brunch spread you might encounter at a fancy hotel.

Yes, they’re that good. And you would never in a million years guess that these scones are a frozen, ready-to-bake product that are primed to serve after about 35 minutes in an oven.

Welcome to Scone on the Range, the creation of Marilyn Pollack Naron, a Lawrence woman and 1989 graduate of Kansas University’s School of Journalism.

Naron is a chef and founder of her company, Windowsill Foods Inc., which is at the start of a national rollout of Scone on the Range products in supermarkets and upscale gourmet and specialty stores in Los Angeles, Omaha, the Kansas City area and Naron’s home base, Lawrence. Next up on the list is San Francisco.

Naron’s fledgling company, and her four varieties of scones double chocolate ginger, raisin butter pecan, wild blueberry oatmeal and apricot chocolate chip got their start in Lawrence last year.

Naron, a 1994 graduate of The Culinary School of Kendall College in Evanston, Ill., operated a catering business, called The Happy Ending, out of her home from 1996 to 2001.

She created specialty sweets and desserts for many private functions, as well as providing desserts for Shalor’s, the restaurant in The Eldridge Hotel, 701 Mass.

“The scones (idea) came up because I was baking scones for Borders Books for a long time. They were very popular. That’s all I was doing making scones around the clock. I’d bake them and deliver twice a week to Borders,” said Naron, 35.

Kansas University graduate Marilyn Pollack Naron, Lawrence, has founded a company called Windowsill Foods Inc., which is at the start of a national rollout of Scone on the Range products.

Then it happened that Naron and her husband, Greg Naron, 36, an intellectual property lawyer who telecommutes to his job in Chicago, had to leave town for a trip.

So Marilyn Naron asked Borders if they would try baking, in the store cafe’s small cookie oven, some of her scone dough that she’d whipped up and frozen ahead of time.

“It worked so well that a light bulb just went off over my head. It turned out that the fresh-baked product tasted even better than the scones I was delivering twice a week,” Naron recalled.

“I thought, ‘Well, we have an interesting thing here.’ After years of catering and baking everything, I thought it might be good to focus on just one product. And the thought of people baking off my scones in their own kitchens seemed like a good idea.”

Perfecting the product

So Naron began to sell her frozen, ready-to-bake scones in Lawrence markets and specialty stores. She sold them in packages of four, under a unique name: Get Sconed.

Lawrence resident Marilyn Pollack Naron's Scone on the Range sells for .49 to .49 and can be found in the frozen section of many area supermarkets.

After having some success locally with the scones, Naron felt her product could do well if it were sold nationally. She began to take steps toward creating a large-scale retail product.

“Baking the scones (for sale in Lawrence) quickly became too big for me, and I knew if it was going to get even bigger, I’d have to find a way to produce mass quantities of them. It became a quest to find someone to make these for me,” she said.

Naron eventually hired a retail food consultant who specialized in bringing products to the national market. The consultant matched her up with a manufacturer in California who met Naron’s high standards, which meant using the same premium ingredients and preparing the scones nearly the same way she would in her own kitchen.

Naron worked for months with the manufacturer to perfect the product, which meant trying to reproduce the same type of scone that she’d come up with in her home.

“The recipe is virtually the same as the one I began with. It’s the way I learned to make scones in restaurants and bakeries in Chicago. I started with a classic cream scone and tweaked it until it became something different,” she said.

“I think they’re even better now. They’re more consistent than when I was making them. They’re just as good, if not better than, the ones made from the original recipe in my kitchen.”

Easy and versatile

Well, Naron did change one thing about her scones: the name. Get Sconed didn’t make it to the big time.

“We decided we would rename the product for the national market. Greg and I came up with ‘Scone on the Range’ jointly. We liked the prairie connotations. That’s what’s funny about it. Scones are traditionally British, but we created ours in the Midwest,” she said.

Marilyn Pollack Naron's scones can make a nice dessert or brunch item when served with jam or fruit.

Naron called upon her training from KU’s School of Journalism, writing all of the copy for the scone packaging and sales material. Her husband helped with the legal end of creating a national brand. Marilyn Naron’s dad, XXXX, a certified public accountant, provided the number crunching.

Overall, it has taken Naron about a year to take her scones national and back home to Lawrence.

She thinks they’re going to be big hit because of their versatility, great taste and ease to prepare.

“With the holidays coming up, they’re great to have around for unexpected guests. You can have brunch or dessert ready in 30 minutes. You can serve them with a traditional afternoon tea with jam and fruit. Or you can pull them out of the oven and top them with ice cream for a late-night snack,” Naron said.

And yes, she still eats her scones.

“The double chocolate ginger is my favorite. I can eat them anytime, anywhere. You’d think I’d be sick of them, but they’re so good.”