Atticus Scones

For 25 years my husband has been after me to recreate a scone that he used to have at a bookstore in New Haven, Connecticut. Twenty five years ago there was the Atticus bookstore right on the edge of the Yale University Campus, I’d like to think it’s still there. We use to think it was edgy and cool because there was a coffee shop right in the middle of the bookstore. This was a bit of brilliance, imagine, looking at books while drinking coffee? This was something out of some crazy futuristic space movie. What brilliant mind thought this could work? (Get it? Sarcasm.)
I think coffee drinks were limited to “a cup of coffee” and for $1.25 it was bottomless but what was most appealing to us was the menu. I always ordered “French Bread”. It was a generous slice of a perfect baguette with a little pot of Jam and Butter. The bread was everything you can imagine a perfect piece of bread could be and the waitress would come around and replenish your jam. That was all I wanted out of life. My husband, however, was addicted to the scones. They were his idea of perfection. Down the street there was an uber groovy hippy chic restaurant called “Claire’s Cornucopia” and they had scones too but they were not the little bit of heaven on a plate they way that Atticus had achieved. (I liked the ones from Claire’s because sometimes they had chocolate chips in them).
Anytime I offered to make anything Jim wanted for breakfast he would ask for a scone, actually he wanted that scone. I would try and try and tweek and adjust but they never ever were they the excact scone of his memory. Too cakey, to much like shortbread, to moist, to dry, never ever quite right! I researched and studied, Joy of Cooking, Martha Stewart, Julie Child, Gourmet Magazine and thing I could find to compare and contrast. Finally I thought “google it” I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before, you never know. So I typed in exactly this “Atticus Café Scone Recipe” and there it was. Some blog/forum/ food group type thing and an article that began with “I was the chef at the Atticus café in the early 80’s and here is my scone recipe”. Unbelievable. Seriously, I felt a rush of adrenaline and I thought “this is it”. This is really it. Quest over.I pasted and clipped on to a blank word document and put it up on my refrigerator. It was way different then the path I had been searching. Cream of Tarter? I was not ever close. So I made them, infused with the love I have had for my husband since the day I met him in 1981. They were beautiful. Brushed with an eggwash and embedded with currants. This was it. They had arrived. I finally made THE SCONE.
I presented them to my husband with a cup of coffee; I even used the “nice plates” (as opposed to the everyday chipped ones). Here it is here is your scone. He took a bite, smiled, sipped some coffee, took another bite and said……….”close, these are very close”.
I give up, unless I can present them to him sitting in the middle of a book store in the early 80’s comparing The Specials with Madness and what place in history The Jam hold with my brother Peter. Unless there is classical music playing and we are surrounded with Yale students discussing Joyce versus Proust it will never ever be the Scone.
That’s O.K., he thinks my carrot cake is perfection and he brings me coffee in bed n Sunday mornings.

"Thank you Chef John Ryan from the Atticus Cafe Scones"
2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
6 tablespoons cold butter
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or currants
2 eggs with milk added to total 1/2 cup
Turn your oven on to 375 degrees F and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil. While your oven heats up, mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. Cut the shortening or butter into the dry ingredients until the fat is gravel-sized or smaller. Then quickly press/rub the lumps of butter between your palms--imagine flattening the butter into leaves. When the mixture resembles cornmeal, stir in the walnuts or currants.
Beat the eggs and milk together in a measuring cup, then pour that mixture over the dry ingredients and toss. Gather the mixture like a snowball and flatten it on the counter into a disc about 3/4 inch thick. Cut the disc into pie-shaped wedges and lay them on your cookie sheet. Bake until they are golden brown, 25 to 30 minutes

Jim’s Perfect Carrot Cake
3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
3 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1 1/4 cups vegetable oil
4 large eggs (room temperatur), lightly beaten 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups shelled walnuts, chopped
1 cup Raisins soaked for several hours in ¾ cup of warm bourbon (we like Maker’s Mark)
1 1/3 cups pureed cooked carrots
Cream Cheese Frosting
Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease two 9-inch cake pans. 2. Sift flour, sugar, salt, baking soda and cinnamon into a bowl. Add oil, eggs and vanilla. Beat well. Fold in walnuts, raisins (with Liquid),and carrots mush. 3. Divide batter between prepared pans and smooth tops with a rubber spatula. Set on the middle rack of the oven and bake until edges have pulled away from sides and a cake tester inserted in center comes out clean, about 50 minutes. 4. Cool 15 minutes, then remove sides of pans and place layers still on pan bottoms on cake racks to cool completely, 3 hours. 5. Gently remove layers from pan bottoms and frost with your favorite Cream Cheese frosting (but for pete’s sake do not use premade from a can) Serves 10 to 12. (counts as breakfast food on Birthdays)