Chinese Five Spice Scones

I've loved the Baked series of cookbooks since the very first time I opened Baked: New Frontiers. I made their root beer bundt cake and have lusted after their amazing desserts ever since. I pre-ordered each subsequent cookbook, anxious for their delivery. I made my PI their mile-high chocolate cake for his birthday. I got the idea for doing 12 days of cookies before Christmas their 12 days of cookies section in Baked: Occasions. Living close to NYC, I made the crazy long pilgrimage to Red Hook, Brooklyn via public transport to go to the Baked boys' first location. (And the grasshopper bar I bought there did not disappoint.) ...Basically, I am madly in love with these books.

So, last weekend while I was bouncing around baking blogs, I was thrilled to discover Stellina Sweets, and through her, Baked Sunday Mornings, a site dedicated to cooking through these gorgeous cookbooks. Even better, they let anyone join in the fun! So this Sunday's selection of Chinese five spice scones from Baked Occasions (since we're close to Chinese New Year and Baked Occasions is organized by "holidays") obviously had to be made.

Chinese five spice scones are not something I would have attempted on my own. I am not usually a huge fan of sesame seed-containing baked goods and I've also never been 100% happy with Chinese 5 spice powder as an ingredient. But that's the beauty of community sites like Baked Sunday Mornings. Plus, I had almost exactly the right amount of sesame seeds (¼ cup instead of ⅓), I had almost a full jar of the spice blend from Penzey's in my pantry,  and some buttermilk that needed to be used up, so the timing of this recipe choice was perfect.

I did struggle a bit with this recipe. I needed to add more than double the amount of buttermilk called for to get my dough to come together, and even then it was quite crumbly. After worriedly adding extra tablespoon after an extra tablespoon of buttermilk (in the end, I added at least ½ cup of buttermilk total to get my dough to begin coming together), I thought for sure I would have overworked the dough and these scones would turn out tough. Fearing the worst, I brushed my eight shaggy messes with buttermilk, sprinkled some demerara sugar on top, and popped them in the oven for 16 minutes.

I was wrong though - I wound up with 8 moderately sized scones to take to work, and everyone who tried them really liked them. They were airy and light, not too sweet, and the sesame seeds added a nice extra dimension. My coworkers found the spice hard to identify, but they enjoyed the way it lingered after the scone was finished. A couple of people wished they had some butter to pair with them, just as Matt and Renato suggest. I will say that these scones are much better fresh - by mid-afternoon, they seemed to have lost some of their mojo. A quick toast and some butter probably would have rejuvenated them completely. Nevertheless, I ate one for dessert after some lamb siniya, it was still tasty, and it paired really nicely with those Middle Eastern flavors.

I'm not sure that I will be adding the Chinese five spice scone to a regular breakfast rotation, but they're definitely worth baking every once in a while.

You can find the recipe at Baked Sunday Mornings.