I’m behind on my blogging due to many reasons, including the fact that I am unsure what I’ve even been subsisting on for the last two weeks. (Well, that’s not completely true; I had about four days’ worth of mustard-butter broccoli pasta to get through.) And I guess I was also hesitating to post these scones for several reasons, not the least of which is that they were only mostly successful. I mean, who wants to read a cooking blog by someone who keeps making mistakes? It doesn’t scream confidence.

That’s not to say these Berry Scones weren’t light and flaky and fully of raspberry deliciousness. It’s just that I really should have moved the oven rack up about two levels so the bottoms didn’t bake (um, brown) quite as quickly as they ended up doing. However, perhaps we can all use this as a lesson about making sure your oven rack is in the middle of the oven when it comes to baking and not being lazy about moving it when you discover it’s a bit low.

So, this really all began because I had this extra buttermilk lying around and I really didn’t want to waste it. And I was on a bit of a scone kick because I do believe that practice makes perfect. Oh, and because I believe in full disclosure, it was also a bit because I had just bought my first set of biscuit cutters — a lovely batch of three varying sizes that nest inside each other. So, really, a buttermilk scone made perfect sense. And, bless the Internet, I found a nice recipe.

All went surprisingly well, though it did get a bit messy because I broke apart the frozen raspberries as I wanted them to be a little more well distributed. I now have a pink-stained rolling pin, but it was worth it. I’d much rather have raspberries in every bite than just one or two in an entire scone.

Thankfully, because they were pretty tall and flaky, it was easy to just cut the less-than-desirable bottoms off and continue to enjoy.

In future, I would add more lemon zest because I love all things lemon and I feel it would have perked these up even more, adding to the summery flavour.

Berry Scones

• 4 3/4 cups flour
• 1 cup, 1 tbsp. unsalted butter
• 1 tbsp. baking powder
• 3/4 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup fruit (fresh or dried)
• 1 1/2 cups buttermilk
• 1 tsp. lemon zest

Preheat oven to 400. Mix together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar. Using a food processor, a pastry blender or two knives, cut the butter into the flour until it looks like coarse oatmeal. Add the lemon zest and fruit and mix to combine. Add all of the buttermilk at once, then stir just until the dough comes together. Topple out onto floured counter and form into a ball before rolling out until it’s about an inch thick. Cut out using cutters or into rustic triangles using a knife.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, though I would start checking sooner.

Eat. Especially if you can find devonshire cream somewhere.