The house scone.

The recipe from Episode Two of Galena House Audio. You cannot grand-gesture a scone — there is only cold butter, a light hand, and getting up tomorrow to do it again.

What you need

• 2 cups flour
• ¼ cup sugar
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 2¼ teaspoons baking powder — at altitude. Sea level: use the full tablespoon. Live your life.
• ½ cup butter, cold. Actually cold.
• 1 cup heavy cream — up here, a splash more; the air is thirsty and it will drink your dough
• Coarse sugar, for the tops
• Currants if you want them. Orange zest if it’s Sunday.

What you do

1. Whisk the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder.
2. Cut the cold butter into the flour until the whole bowl looks like gravel with ambitions.
3. Pour in the cream. Stir until it just barely holds together. You are going to want to keep going. Don’t. A scone is not bread — it doesn’t want your effort, it wants your restraint.
4. Fold the dough over itself twice. Twice — not twelve times. Pat into a circle about an inch thick.
5. Cut eight wedges. Brush the tops with cream. Scatter coarse sugar over them like you mean it.
6. Bake at 425° for 13–15 minutes, until the tops go gold and the kitchen changes its mind about the morning. Sea level: 400°, a minute or two longer.

It’s a promise kept at seven in the morning — and it only means something because it gets kept again the next day.
Also, it’s delicious. Not everything has to be a metaphor.