Let's start the day - and the blog - with Fruit Scones, a Williams-Sonoma recipe with JGH's variations

We're starting with a stalwart from the kitchen of the great Chuck Williams. These scones are perfect for breakfast, to offer unexpected guests (they freeze great), and pretty much any time. I think the original recipe used half a cup of chopped, crystallized ginger as the flavoring. I've experimented so much since, I don't rightly recall.

Ingredients:

3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
5 tsps baking powder
1 tsp salt
16 tbsps/2 sticks chilled, unsalted butter
1 egg
scant 1/2 cup milk

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a big baking sheet with parchment. Process dry ingredients with butter until you get fine crumbs*. Whisk egg and milk, add to dry mixture and mix to form moist clumps of dough (no over mixing!) Turn onto lightly floured surface, pat together with hands to make a cube of the dough. Make four cuts each way through the dough so you end up with 16 little towers (it's ok, they'll flatten into shape in the baking process). Next time I make some I'm going to try and add a photograph here to show you what I mean. Bake until golden, 25-35 minutes.

Cutting the dough

Blueberry-cinnamon scones

Flavors:
*At the crumb stage stir in one of these combinations:
- chopped pecans and banana (if banana ripe, mash with egg and reduce milk a little)
- blueberries and vanilla
- raspberries and almonds
- cranberries and orange zest (Thanksgiving breakfast, right?)
- chopped walnuts and maple syrup (reduce sugar, sprinkle brown sugar on top to form crust)
- chopped apple, oats and pumpkin pie spice (for a Hallowe'en treat not trick)