Ah… leftover cheese. I’m sure we’ve all seen this after a big Christmas party – there’s always a bit of cheese left over, and you probably aren’t feeling like just eating the stuff straight. We did a big Christmas BBQ at work, and we had quite a bit of Stilton (which is a blue cheese) left over on the cheese plate. So I took it home and came up with this recipe to use it all up, since it’s not the kind of cheese you can sit around and eat absolute mounds of.
Ingredients:
- 2/3 cup stilton or other blue cheese, very finely crumbled
- 1 tsp ground sage
- 3 tbsp liquid egg white
- 1 cup skim milk
- 2 and 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
- 3 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup cold butter/margarine
Method:
In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, salt and sage.
Cut in your butter with a fork or a pastry blender. I used a fork because I was using margarine, but if you’re using butter, cut it into small cubes first. I also recommend you make the investment in the pastry blender if you want to bake a lot with butter – it’s a half moon shaped series of wires (sort of like a very firm wisk) attached to a handle. ANYHOW…
In a separate bowl, stir together the egg whites (which you purchase in a carton! How wasteful!) and skim milk.
Dump the crumbled cheese onto the flour mixture, then pour the mix and egg white mixture in. Stir up with a fork until the whole thing starts to stick together into a ball of ragged looking dough.
Dump the dough out onto your counter, (add a bit of flour to your counter if it seems to be sticking – mine didn’t need any though), and knead the dough 10 times.
Flatten the dough into a rectangle, about 7 by 10 inches (I eyeballed this, don’t get out a ruler or anything!) and shape the edges so they’re even.
Get out a good knife, and cut the dough into six squares, then cut each square in half on the diagonal.
Place your scones onto a cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil, shiny side down, and bake for 20 minutes. The stilton might melt and run out a bit, which is why you put the scones on foil – it keeps clean-up easy!
These are nice because they have a good sharp flavour, but you could really use any kind of leftover cheese to make them. If you were going to use something like swiss or cheddar, I would increase the cheese to one cup though.
