My Food Trail: Easy Peasy Lemonade Scone

A few weeks ago, one of my colleague have this brilliant idea (seem so at the time!) to brighten up our Tuesday morning meeting by making us take turns to bake something for the meeting.
Once you've baked something, you get to pick someone else to do it.
There is the scoring at the end of consumption of the baked goods too (as if the baking has not create enough pressure)!

Craig, whom I thought was unlucky first (turns out I was wrong - as usual) impressed us with baking sausage rolls and bringing them in complete tomato sauce, napkins, cutlery, and paper plates.
It was yummy and the pastry was carved with the company's abbreviated name!!!
Not a good thing for the rest of the team - he had definitely set the standard high.
(He's still leading the bake off competition.)

The week after, Mick came in with raspberry and white chocolate muffin.
It was a bit too oily - but the white chocolate and raspberry semi made up for it.
Plus, I love my brekky muffin! :P
That week I decided that when it comes my turn, I'll bake banana bread.
I've made them once and I quite like it.
I also know that you can't go wrong with banana-anything for brekky!

But Ruth, the girl Mick chose to bake for the following week, brought in banana bread. !!!!
Any fools know that you shouldn't offer the same thing as someone else unless you're certain your version is better and I'm definitely no baker.
So my banana bread plan went pffftttt and I start looking for backup plan.

Last week, Dylan brought in red velvet cupcake, which looks stunning - but I missed out cause I was busy chilling and munching Jessy's cooking in Hamilton Island.
When I got back and check my email, hmm guess what, he picked me to do it this week!
!!!! x(
Oh well - it has to be done sometime. :)

With no definite backup plan and time restriction (my PSC class finishing at 9 PM so I get home about 9.40 - if I'm lucky!), I need to make something that is simple, but yummy and most importantly, risk-free.
I remembered printing out Rilsta's "Easy Peasy Lemonade Scone" a while ago.
I went to my recipe stash and think, yup, this is it.
Smart choice, Shelvia (pat on the back). Well, that's before I got to Step #3! :P

Step #1 and #2 was easy peasy alright.
Step #3 was horrible. (Yes - I'm a total noob!)
The dough fully stick to my hands (hence - no actual picture of #3, just the mess it created :P)!
Desperate, I chose to move on to step #4 (remembering from my previous scone experience that if I knead them too much they will become hard!), but I just couldn't get my doughs to resemble anything like Rilsta's nicely rolled dough.
My dough stayed looking like Rilsta's picture in step #3!
*The worrying began...*
(Sigh - I don't have a backup plan and it was getting late! I wanna work on photos from the PSC class! Grrr!)

Deep Breathe.... 1, 2, ...
Fiuhh - OK - drop the worry - keep working on it.

So I start assembling my weird dough (definitely not smooth!) on the baking tray.
Tried to use my scone cutter, but it is just not working so use hands instead.
When I nearly finished assembling the dough, it hits me that ....
Hmmmm - I probably should have flour-ed my palms!!!
A-Ha! That's it!
Wash hands, powder-ed my palms, go back to those weird dough and rolled them properly. *Big grin on my face!*

Fiuhhhh - now it start to look a little like Rilsta's picture in Step #5, except that mine is not that evenly split between the doughs.
Some are small and some are big.
That's OK, it's part of the fun. :P

Voila! :)

Now, pop them in the oven.
Time to clean up and cross my fingers until the 15 minutes timer *ding*.

1.. 2.. 3 minutes pass by...
15 minutes... *DING* - (I had to turn it sideways once, because my oven isn't evenly heated) - tasting time!!!!

YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!! It looks decent.
First bite? I had it just as it is (yes, a bit on the bland side), cause my jam is in the office already.
But the texture, wow, I like! :)

Now, let's hope my colleagues agree and give me high scores!
Cause there are 2 Gold Class tickets + $50 food voucher at stake. :)

Photos:
If I can do it, I promise you can! :)

Thanks so much to Rilsta from My Food Trail. Really appreciated the recipe, the help and the prompt response to my baking newbie questions. :) Thank you, thank you, thank you!

G nite all!

Update 2nd March 2010: Colleagues like it! :) Yay Yay Yay!