Raspberry White Chocolate Scones

After a wonderful, relaxing holiday break, it is time to get back into the routine of everyday life. I have been resisting it, wanting to hang on to the languid afternoons and laughter-filled evenings with family and friends. It is hard to face the starkness of reality again. I find my feet tripping over themselves as I settle back into old habits and the mundane quality of everyday activities. I know I must cut ties from the holidays, so to speak, so I can face work and school with a clear mind, but it is proving harder than I anticipated.

My mind keeps drifting to warm fireplaces, hearty dinners, and silly games...

I am used to having long, slow mornings where my body can wake up with the sun and I can eat a quiet breakfast as my eyes adjust to the morning light. Life as a graduate student afforded me this small luxury, filling the rest of my afternoon with classes and homework until my job took over and filled my evenings. Mornings became my time to unwind, the small moments to share alone as I mixed up dough in the kitchen or watched the repetitious nature of morning talk shows.

My schedule in the new year, however, is just the opposite. My alarm goes off well before the dawn and I stumble around trying to find my rhythm as my eyes burn under the yellow light of the apartment. I head out to work in the dark, arriving to a windowless room, wishing my tired brain had the capacity to remember to bring a cup of coffee. Most days I do not even see the light of the sun until mid-afternoon passes. My body is slow to adjust to the new routine, confused by the sudden lack of my natural alarm clock.

Oh, I miss my solitary mornings with the sun...

Though my weekday mornings may have vanished, this only strengthens my desire to fully enjoy the slow pace of the weekend mornings. I usually like to make a special breakfast for myself, whether it be waffles, pancakes, or a modest bowl of oatmeal. Over the holidays, I made a batch of these Raspberry White Chocolate Scones. They may be a simple pastry, but they lent a luxurious quality to the morning I made them and the mornings that followed.

I think we all deserve to give ourselves a little morning luxury whenever we have the space. A good scone can start a quiet morning off just right.

The sharp tones of ripe raspberries meet the sweetness of white chocolate in this delightful breakfast pastry. Raspberry White Chocolate Scones are carefully mixed together to keep the raspberries whole and sprinkled with a little extra sugar before baking. Perhaps what the photographs do not display well is just how incredibly moist and tender these scones truly are. These make for a lovely treat on a weekend morning with a cup of tea or mug of coffee.

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Chocolate Raspberry Pots de Creme

To my mother,

Thank you for anything and everything you do for me. I appreciate it all, even if I don't express it to you nearly enough. You're my editor. You're my shoulder to lean on. You're my source of wisdom. You're my mentor. You're my friend. But most of all, you're my mother and I love you, forever and always.

Thank you for letting me move back home while I'm in between places. I know I never seem to make my bed and my room is always a mess. I know the kitchen is always covered in a thin, immovable layer of powdered sugar and flour and it's totally my fault. I know, in my 22 years of life, I haven't quite figured out that my dirty clothes go in the laundry basket instead of on the floor.

Thank you for understanding this is a difficult concept for me.

I can't express my appreciation to you for allowing me to take as much time as I need to figure out what I want to do with my life. You don't rush me or push me towards one direction over another. You listen to me thoughtfully and try to help me figure out where I belong. Thank you for supporting me, no matter what my "career of the day" happens to be.

I love you because I can count on you to watch every romantic comedy with me, no matter how awful or cheesy it may be. I love you because you support my obsessive baking even when we're all watching our calories. I love you because we both have lofty dreams of being gardeners even though we can't be bothered to weed our vegetables once we plant them.

But most of all, I love you for being the kind of mother I can only hope to be someday. Happy Mother's Day!

Love,
Kristin

These Chocolate Raspberry Pots de Creme are dark, decadent, and rich. Dark chocolate is melted and mixed into a base of cream cheese. Raspberries are then infused into the chocolate, bringing a touch of sweetness and a new dimension of flavor. These pots are not for the faint of heart. If you are wary of such a dark and decadent dessert, feel free to use a semi-sweet or even milk chocolate to cut the bitterness of the dark chocolate. It will give it more sweetness and a lighter tone.

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Raspberry Swirled Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream

With the feeling of spring in the air, I've been craving more summer sweets. Fruits, light desserts, and cold treats are topping the list. Even though the weather has not been very cooperative in my neck of the woods lately, I've decided I will try to bring my own spring to my kitchen (wearing my winter coat and all). In the lastest of my desperate pleas to will actual spring into finding me, I thought I might be able lure it in with delicious foods.

After all this effort (and all the pink and yellow delights gracing the pages of this blog), I think I've finally done it.

About time.

One of the side effects of all this spring baking is a serious (and possibly life threating) lack of chocolate. For nearly a month I haven't shared any chocolate recipes with you. Not one. That must be some kind of record and I'm not sure its one I should be proud of. As a self-proclaimed chocoholic, I'm no longer living up to my name.

So this week, in order to fix this grave mistake, I challenged myself to make a spring dessert with chocolate just to prove that it can indeed be done. And it can. In this decadent dessert, raspberries, coconut, chocolate, and ice cream come together to make a sweet treat you're certainly not going to want to miss.

This Raspberry Swirled Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream has complex flavors that meld just beautifully together. The base of the ice cream is not a custard, but rather a combination of coconut milk, cream, and sweetened condensed milk. While this does yield a subtle coconut flavor to the final product, the raspberry swirl overwhelms this flavor in most spoonfuls. Nevertheless, raspberry and coconut are good friends and you will not mind the match. The chocolate chunks are there simply because I believe chocolate makes everything better (and in this ice cream, it truly does), but you could omit this ingredient if you just wanted a fruity treat.

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