Anti-Anxiety Whole Wheat Trail Mix Scones

I'm getting married on Saturday.  Hopefully that explains my post title a bit. I've been swept up lately in the fun of party planning and bridal showers and excitement. This particular morning, though, it all came crashing down on my pre-coffee brain: oh my goodness, I don't have a dress for the after party!  What will my parents do while I'm at my bachelorette party? Where will my sister's dog sleep?  Oh my gosh, I have totally lost my veil.  Oh, no, wait there it is. (This has, unfortunately, crossed my anxiety-ridden pre-wedding brain with practically every essential item of my wedding wardrobe.) And then, breakfast. I was hungry, one cup of coffee down, one real meal to go. Usually on a lazy Saturday or Sunday, the answer is simple: I make muffins.

Yet this Sunday, there I was, facing a bowl full of 2 cups of flour per recipe possibility #1 and Googling yet another permutation of "whole wheat muffin recipe" in the hopes that just one of them would yield muffins I could make from ingredients at my new house, where my fiance currently lives, without running back to my old house, where I currently live, at which point I may as well just go to the store. That's when it hit me: this is not fun today. I only cook when it's fun. My tummy is a demanding little thing in the mornings, though, and cereal and milk just won't cut it. Scones were the answer.

2 cups flour? Sure that'll work. Oatmeal for texture. Baking powder, no baking soda necessary (good thing, too, because the only box in the house is currently busy deodorizing the fridge and is therefore forbidden from having anything to do with my scones). Butter, 1 stick. Milk. I would have liked buttermilk but whatchagonnado. Trail mix because I didn't have raisins. Eggs. And you know what? 20 minutes later, there they were. My scones. Eaten somewhat ravenously slathered with butter and jam and black coffee for company's sake.  Barely sweet, wonderfully crunchy.

This time next week I will be married. My dress will be packed, my hair washed, my friends on their way home. And I will be married.

I think I need another scone.

Butter + jam? Always.

Anti-Anxiety Whole Wheat Trail Mix Scones

• 2 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
• 1/2 cup old-fashioned oatmeal
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup trail mix, a natural nuts-and-seeds variety, or any combination of dried fruits and nuts to total 1/2 cup.
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, unsalted, cold and cubed (keep this in the fridge until just before you make the scones)
• 1/2 cup dairy (I used lactose-free milk because that's what was in the fridge, but ideally I would have liked buttermilk, sour cream, or plain yogurt, in that order)
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
2. Mix together the dry ingredients with a fork or whisk.
3. Cut your butter lengthwise into four long pieces, like a checkerboard cookie, then cut off the butter in "pats" so you have little butter cubes. Try not to handle the butter too much as you want it to melt as little as possible before scone meets oven.  
4. I cut my butter into the flour with my hands (this is part of the stress relief), but a fork or pastry blender works great here (I never could get the two knives thing down).
5. Make a little well in the middle of your dry ingredients and add the eggs and milk into the well.  Stir briskly with a fork until a soft dough forms. Try to stir up from the bottom of the bowl as you work so you can incorporate all the bits of flour from the bottom of the bowl.
6. Dump directly onto a cookie sheet or jelly roll pan (I used the Goldtouch nonstick sheet from Williams-Sonoma, which did a beautiful job of browning). Knead only enough to gather the dough together and pat into a round 8 inches around and 1 1/2 inches high. Score the dough into 8 wedges using a sharp chef's knife or bench scraper by cutting almost, but not quite, all the way through the dough.
7. Bake for 8 minutes.  Turn the oven off and leave the scones in the oven for another 10 minutes.