Fresh Berry & Fruit Scones

I first made these with fresh apricots, then the blueberries started ripening, and the last version I used some plums as a backdrop to the day's pick of blueberries. Consider this a template for a scone into which you can interject fruits, nuts and various seeds/flour and levels of sweetness. If you bake them 20-25 minutes at 375F they will be lovely, and if you leave them another 5-10 minutes they will be crisp on the outsides, while still moist inside.

Berry & Fruit Scones - makes 6 good sized scones

1/2 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup sorghum flour
1/2 cup potato starch
2 Tbsp flax seeds, ground
1 Tbsp amaranth, ground
2 Tbsp walnuts, ground - or use 2 Tbsp Almond Meal Flour
1/2-2/3 cup walnuts - pieces
1.5 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp sea salt
1 tsp cinnamon
2 Tbsp "Truvia" (Stevia + sugar) or use maple syrup or agave
1/2 cup original unsweetened soy or almond milk
2 apricots or 2 plums - peeled and mashed
1 cup berries, gently mashed in part, leaving some whole(I used mixed blackberries/raspberries and then straight up blueberries)

1. Heat up your oven.
2. Grind up the materials that need to be ground, and put these in a medium sized bowl. Add the rest of the dry materials - flours, starch, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and "Truvia" if you are using dry sweetener, combining this until it is one flour-like substance.
3. Mix all the moist materials in another bowl - mash the apricot or plum (or banana or pear) first, add berries and gently mash, add liquid syrupy sweetener to this if you are using that, and the soy or almond milk.
4. Stir the wet together, and then add it to the dry, stirring gently but combining thoroughly. Stir in the nut pieces. This will be more like a moist dough than a batter.
5. Set out your silicone baking sheet (I put it on a cookie sheet) and with a large spoon, plop six 3"x 2.5" scones-to-be. Bake for 20-30 minutes depending upon how crisp you like the outside.

Apricot Tart

We couldn't resist the fresh apricots when they began to appear from the local orchard. Of course we ate 3 of them on the way home in the car, but then there were the rest to think about. The next morning, it was all I could think about... and I wondered how to make one of those beautiful pastries that we had encountered in Europe decades ago. Not having made them when I was using butter and eggs and sugar and wheat flour, I didn't have to undo any ideas, just come up with a way to put a dough under them and a glaze over them. Here's what I came up with.

Apricot Tart - (makes 6" x10" pastry)
oven at 350F


2 fresh ripe apricots
2 Tbsp flax seed, ground (I'm doing this all the time for the sake of Omega 3's)
2 Tbsp almond meal
1/3 c potato starch (just figuring out what this adds to texture)
3/4 c brown rice flour
2 TBSP oat bran (avoid if must be purely gluten free)
2 TBSP chick pea flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1-2 TBSP agave (how sweet do you need the pastry to be?)
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 c almonds (sort of slivered)

For glaze: 1-2 tsp maple syrup, 1 tsp almond milk + cinnamon

1. Peel and slice, or slice and peel apricots.
2. Mix together all the dry ingredients, and wet ingredients separately.
2. Add wet to dry and gently knead into a soft ball of dough an roughly shape this into a thick rectangle.

3. Spread out a the silicone baking sheet on a baking pan and put the dough on it, gently pressing it outward from the middle until you achieve a little bigger than 6"x10" or thereabouts. Make 2 sets of indentations up the length of the dough, approximately an apricot slice wide (see picture). Lay in the apricot slices in 3 rows. Sprinkle this with almond slivers.
4. Mix up the glaze and drizzle it all over the apricots. My husband thought it could have used more sweetness in the glaze or just more glaze... He likes things sweeter than I do, but I agreed with him that a little more would have been nice. You could use honey instead of maple syrup, or sugar, if you are a sugar-eating person.
5. Bake for about 20 minutes - check for doneness with a toothpick. Let cool just a bit before you try to handle it... then peel it off the silicone and put it on a nice plate for effect!