Brooklyn is beautiful, but everyone needs to get away once in a while, even me. Our aunts were kind enough to give us a week’s stay at a family cottage up in Maine, and two years later, we’re finally cashing in. The cottage is beautiful—a 120 year old pine and spruce cottage, sitting on the lake, in the middle of the woods. No phones, cable and no internet (but a creative internet setup thanks to a healthy cellular connection).

We’re about an hour north of Bar Harbor, so there’s plenty of good food (read: seafood) in the area, but I love vacationing where I also have the opportunity to cook. As we were packing, I thought nothing would be better than enjoying tea and fresh scones for breakfast in our little rustic cottage. So I brought some of my homemade strawberry rhubarb jam and planned to make scones and fresh cream at the cottage.

The scones were straightforward—cream scones directly out of the bible, or as others may call it, The Joy of Cooking:

• 2c. Flour
• ¼ c. Granulated Sugar (if you like them a tad sweet)
• 2 ½ tsp. Baking Powder
• ½ tsp. Salt
• 1 ¼ c. Heavy Cream

Preheat oven to 450°F. Sift dry ingredients into a bowl, then add cream with a few swift strokes, making sure not to over mix.

So easy! Flour, baking powder, sugar, salt and cream.

**Now here’s were Joy of Cooking and I differ in opinions. The recipe tells you to turn dough onto a floured surface and eventually cut into triangles. That’s WAY too much work for me. Instead I drop heaping spoonfuls onto a parchment covered baking sheet, and flatten each a bit before sprinkling with some extra granulated sugar. Then bake for about 10-15min, depending on your oven. See my edits are much easier!

Easy drop scones rather than rolling and slicing.

Final results–just as good as the original recipe, maybe better.

Now as much as I enjoy a break from gizmos and gadgets, I really REALLY missed my Kitchenaid when making the cream. In the cottage’s kitchen I found a hand mixer from probably 1950. Not bad, probably the same mixer my mom had for a number of years and I used to make my first cupcakes. Now I don’t know if the mixer was too old to whip, or if there wasn’t enough electricity flowing through the cottage, but every 30 seconds or so it would stop and wouldn’t turn back on for a bit. So hanging on the wall, covered in cobwebs, I found a real hand mixer, you know, one of those ones you have to turn the crank on the side? What a workout. My cream probably took 2-3 times longer than it should have, but I swear the extra effort (and maybe a few drops of sweat) made it even tastier. I was so determined to enjoy my tea and scones for breakfast—I might have even resorted to hand whipping with a fork if that didn’t work!

How to whip cream, pre-Kitchenaid days

Cream scone with fresh whipped cream and strawberry rhubarb jam