I like to have some kind of baked good in the morning along with my cup of coffee, and honestly, there is nothing better than a scone to serve that purpose. Muffins are nice, but they’re too sweet (and often they are also the size of a man’s head). Biscotti go fabulously with coffee, but inevitably disintegrate into crumbs whenever I attempt to eat them.

But scones… aahhh. They’re just so close to perfect. Also, you can freeze them and just pop one out whenever you want to eat it—beautiful!

So I was rooting around for a great scone recipe this weekend, and I unearthed this monster on the mother of all recipe sites, the (aptly named) All Recipes. I will announce this publicly: I will never search for another scone recipe again. These are SO AMAZING!

To make a flawless recipe even better, they are also customizable. Yeah, that’s right. The recipe lists raisins as an optional ingredient, so if you don’t want raisin scones, you can basically throw whatever you do want right in the batter and mix it up.

I made cranberry-walnut scones, but the possibilities are endless. Chocolate-chip scones? Okay! Orange-lemon scones? Yes! Irish coffee scones? Well… I’m not quite that ambitious, but go for it and let me know how it turns out.

A trick to getting great scones is to mold the batter into a solid rectangle that you can then paint with buttermilk/cream and sugar and slice into small triangles:

So don’t scoop out hunks of batter and shape your scones individually—you’ll waste loads of time, and your batch of scones will end up all kinds of bizarre shapes.

A few more tips on this recipe that are valuable:

• Do NOT believe the serving size! I made 2/3 of the recipe, cut out smallish (but not miniature) scones, and ended up with 24 of them. It might make 12 scones, but they will be enormous, so scale back if you need to.

• I was running out of sour cream, so I subbed half the sour cream with buttermilk. Turned out fine.

• I had to cook mine for 30-35 minutes instead of the recommended 12-15 before they turned golden brown on top (quirk of the oven, perhaps?).

• Beware that these will expand in the oven. They won’t puff up very much, but they will spread to the sides, so place them at least an inch and a half apart from each other.

I have never quite been able to match the final product, but I do have the recipe, and I am more than willing to share it with you. I believe it’s one of those recipes that gives good results every time but takes a lifetime to perfect… so check back with me in 30 years or so to see how I’m doing.

In the meantime, get the following things together:

FOR THE DOUGH

• 1 package (about 1 ½ teaspoons) rapid-rise yeast

• 1 cup warm water (but not so hot that it hurts your fingers)

• 3 tablespoons olive oil

• 1 tsp salt

• 2 ½ cups flour

• 1 ½ tsp dry basil

• 1 ½ tsp dry oregano

FOR THE PIZZA

• 8 oz can pizza sauce (note: NOT tomato sauce)

• 2 cups mozzarella cheese

• various toppings (my favorite combo is pepperoni, mushrooms, green olives, and black olives)

To make the dough, pour the warm water in a large bowl. Sprinkle the package of yeast over the water. Stir briefly. Add the olive oil, salt, basil, and oregano, and stir in the flour ½ cup at a time. Mix everything until you have a stiff dough. Remove it from the bowl (along with any flour it hasn’t yet absorbed), and knead it on a countertop or other smooth surface for 5-10 minutes. Thump it hard!

When you’re done kneading, wash out the big bowl and coat it thinly with olive oil. Roll the ball of dough in the oil to coat, then stretch some plastic wrap tightly over the top of the bowl.

Leave everything for about two hours. When you come back, the dough should have puffed up in a major way—it should be about twice the size it was before. If not, wait another 20 minutes or so and check it again.

If the dough is huge, preheat the oven to 500. Take out the massive dough and punch it down gently. It should be quite elastic. Take out your flour and your pizza pan. Sprinkle a big, flat surface with flour, and use your hands (NOT a rolling pin) to stretch out the dough to the desired size of your pizza (this recipe makes one pretty big pizza, about 17” or so). Lay the finished circle gently on the pizza pan (it helps to fold it into quarters first).

Now for the fun part. Use a spoon to spread the pizza sauce evenly on top of the pizza. Add the toppings and cheese. Pop it in the oven, and let it cook for 20-25 minutes. The smell will be overpowering. When you take it out, all nice and brown and sizzling, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you made your very own pizza!

[Image courtesy of greenpanda.wordpress.com.]

I have never liked blueberry pie. In fact, I would even go beyond that—I’ve always thought it was disgusting. I am not the biggest fan of fresh blueberries, either, but lately I have started to like them more and more.

Despite all of this, last week I could not stop thinking about how I really wanted to make a blueberry pie. Why did I think this… why? I have no idea. I am still unable to explain it. But I suspect it was divine intervention, because the resulting blueberry pie was THE BEST THING I HAVE EVER EATEN.

The recipe is dunce-free (not that CC readers are dunces, of course) and uses fresh berries, which I suspect is the real reason for my enthusiasm behind this pie. All previous blueberry pies that were set in front of me were either a) made from cans of blueberry pie filling or b) things that I refused to eat because I was under the impression that I hated blueberry pie.

This recipe is different. Different! It is wonderful and fantastic, and it is beautifully photographed in an appealing step-by-step fashion. You cannot mess up this pie. It tastes delicious either warm or cold. It is nice to have with cream, ice cream, or Cool Whip. And it does not become a disgusting, gelatinous mess (although it would be okay if you cut down the amount of cornstarch a little). The best part is that you can really pack the pie with fresh berries (I even threw in a few sliced strawberries):

You can even reduce the recipe with no problems. To make a four-serving mini-pie, I used 1/3 of all the ingredients and it turned out great. Delicious. Fantastic, even. The only word of caution I have is this: Please, I beg you, put your pie pan on top of a baking sheet coated with wax paper or parchment paper. My pie bubbled over in the oven, and I was on my hands and knees for a half-hour scraping fresh blueberry juice off the bottom of the oven.

Really, though, it was still worth it.

To me, these little breads are almost like magic. You roll them flat as pancakes, then they puff up and fill with air. How does it happen? I have no idea, but I’m glad it does.

For two pita pockets, you’ll need ½ cup flour (all-purpose or wheat works), 1 teaspoon sugar, ¼ teaspoon rapid-rise yeast, and 2 tablespoons water.

In a small bowl, mix the flour, sugar, yeast, and water. The water should be around room temperature—just make sure it’s not way too hot or too cold. It’s OK if the dough hardly comes together—you’re going to knead it, and it will absorb more flour when you do that.

In the bowl or on a flat work surface, knead the dough for about 5 minutes. You may need to add more flour as you go along to keep the dough from getting too sticky. When you’re finished, shape the dough into a ball, and put it back in the bowl.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and set it in a warm place to rise for 2 hours. The oven with the pilot light turned on works well. After those 2 hours, the dough should have expanded. It will look flatter, puffier, and maybe a little darker.

Preheat the oven to 500. Separate the dough into two balls, and sprinkle a little flour onto a flat surface. Roll out each ball into a flat pancake shape, somewhere between 1/8” and ¼” thick.

Here’s the tricky part. When you have your two pancake shapes, place them directly onto the oven grids. The oven will be incredibly hot, so BE CAREFUL! Use hot pads if you’re clumsy or if you think you might drop the flattened pieces of dough.

Shut the oven, and bake the breads for 5 minutes. When they’re done—no joke—they will have puffed up to about 2 inches in height. Awesome—and delicious!