My First Time Making a Television Show-Inspired Meal (I Think)

Like most people I know, I watch a lot of cooking shows.  Even though I no longer have cable, I still find myself glued to the television most nights of the week watching the local PBS "Create" channel, which features almost non-stop cooking shows during the week.  My new favorite cooking show — one that I wish I would have discovered a long time ago — is America's Test Kitchen, which is run by the same folks who publish Cook's Illustrated.  For what I think is the first time — despite my long love of cooking shows — I got so inspired by one recipe I saw that I decided to make it only a few days later.   The recipe was for perfectly flakey and moist blueberry scones, and the results were so good that not only do I think I will make them again and again, but I also finally subscribed to Cook's Illustrated!  Details after the picture.

The most interesting part of this recipe is that you freeze the butter before you shred it, and then freeze it again.  Given how concerned one should be with cold butter for pie and other types of flaky-crust recipes, I guess its no surprise that freezing shredded butter would make sense (the shredded pieces also mean that you don't need to work the butter too much such that it gets warm).  However, as opposed to the direction to only shred half of two sticks of butter to get 8 oz of shredder butter, I ended up shredding just one full stick of butter.  I didn't notice the difference at all in the final product.  I definitely look forward to trying this technique in other baked goods in the future! 

The only other modification of note I made was to reduce the baking time by 5 minutes or so because the first batch was more than a little well-browned.  To access this recipe, please fill out the free registration and link to:  http://www.americastestkitchen.com/recipe.asp?recipeids=4432&iSeason=8.