Chai Spiced Scones

I was so excited to receive my Secret Recipe Club assignment this month.  I was assigned to The Bitchin' Kitchen, a blog that I drool over every single month on our groups posting day.  Needless to say, I went right over and started going through all of the awesome recipes that have been tempting me for months.

I actually kind of wanted to make... oh... everything she has made. But I quickly found one recipe that just begged me to be made right away - Chai Spiced Scones.  I love the warm, sweet, spicy flavor of chai, and it has always been a big treat for me. And even just reading the recipes, I knew that these would be delicious.

The hardest part of the process was the spice mix. Which was only hard because I don't have ground cardamom. All I have is whole cardamom pods.  It's not actually difficult to prepare the ground spice, but it is pretty time consuming.

Little man helped me with this. I cracked each pod, he helped me remove the seeds from inside the green pods...

...and once we had a good amount, I ground it all in my mini-blender.

As I said, not actually hard, just time consuming. But our hands smelled delicious afterwards.

Anyway, once that was done, making the scones was a snap. Even though the recipe didn't call for it, I decided to make the scone dough in my new food processor. Because I can.

The spices looked so cool all lined up.  And within a couple of minutes, the dough was ready!

I then carefully shaped the dough into a big circle, dusted the top with sugar and cut it into wedges.

And they baked up beautifully. And smelled even better than our cardamom hands.

Little man and I loved these. Little miss... well... she doesn't seem to be a cardamom fan, and claimed that these were "too cardamom-y" for her.

These really do pack all of the spicy, delicious goodness of a chai latte, and make a perfect breakfast or afternoon treat.

And, Ellie, thank you for your awesome blog. I will definitely be trying many more of your delicious recipes!!

Chai Spiced Scones
(from The Bitchin' Kitchen)

2 cups all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons sugar plus extra for topping the scones
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
5 tablespoons cold butter
1/4 cup milk (I used coconut milk beverage)
2 large eggs

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.  Line a baking sheet with a piece of parchment paper.
In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and cardamom. Whisk together until all the dry ingredients are incorporated evenly. I did this in my food processor, just pulsing a couple of times to incorporate the dry ingredients.
Cut the cold butter into chunks and add it to the dry ingredients.  Using your hands, rub the butter into the flour mixture until the flour has a grainy appearance. Again, this just took a few pulses of the food processor.
In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs and milk.
Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture.  Stir everything together until it forms one lump of very moist dough.  If the dough is still crumbly and flour remains in the bottom of the bowl, add a small amount of water (about 1/2 to 1 tablespoon) to make the dough come together. A few more pulses of the food processor brought the dough together no problem, though I did need to add about half a tablespoon of extra water.
Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and shape it into one flat disc, about 1-inch thick.  (Shape the dough into two flat discs if you are making mini scones.)
Sprinkle the top of the dough with the extra sugar.
Cut the disc(s) into 8 wedge-shaped pieces.
Place the wedges on the baking sheet.  Bake the scones for 12-15 minutes, or until lightly golden brown on top.

Enjoy!