How can I incorporate fresh fruit into grains?

You are bringing your favorite cups of cream tea on a morning at the office and you'd like to enjoy them a little. Or maybe the berries are on sale and you're wondering what to bake with them. The good news? Adding fresh fruit scones it makes delicious sense.

But it's not as simple as just throwing fruit into your batter bowl. Without careful adjustments, you can end up with sunken, unevenly distributed fruit or soggy pockets in your soft, mushy noodles. So what's the best way to add fresh fruit to cereal?

Dice apples, skin on, on a small wooden cutting board with a knife. — Cut the fruit into small pieces, with or without the skin.

Choose your fruits and prepare accordingly

The stronger the fruit, the better your results will be; Excess liquid is the enemy of your mushroom texture, as it can make your tails extremely soggy, crumbly soggy, soft and dense. Apples and pears are clearly at one end of the durability scale, while crisp raspberries and juicy strawberries are at the other, with fruits like peaches, bananas, pineapples, plums and blueberries in between.

Hard fruits can be diced and mixed directly into the dry grain ingredients. If dicing, aim for cubes a little smaller than 1/2″. If their skin is edible, it's fine to leave it on.

Coarsely chopped strawberries in a glass bowl with a red spoon, glistening with juice. — Fruits tossed with sugar will start to lose their juice quickly, and that's exactly what you want; the drier the fruit, the less likely it is to become soggy when ripe.

For juicy fruits, you need to squeeze out some of their juice before adding them to the pureed batter; otherwise, this extra moisture will create gummy pockets in your wipes. An easy solution is that wet the fruit with sugar: Toss the cut fruit with 1 to 2 tablespoons of sugar, then let it rest for an hour or more, stirring occasionally. Since sugar is hygroscopic (attracts water), the fruit will naturally give up some of its juice. Strain and reserve the juice; can be combined with confectioners' sugar to make a complementary glaze.

Diced pineapple in the basket of an air fryer. — Your air fryer is a great tool for roasting fresh fruit, like this diced pineapple. A square silicone mat down makes cleaning a snap.

For even better results, try it baking diced fruit or berries until they have released much of their juice and become “hard” in texture. Bonus: Roasting intensifies the flavor of the fruit. An air fryer is an easy solution here. Or see how to bake fruit in the oven: Roasting and roasting fruit for baking. Just be sure to cool the fruit completely before using it in your recipe: Chilled fruit is more stable (less likely to break up) and will prevent any butter in the batter from softening, which can affect the wonderful crumbly texture of your mushrooms.

How to add fresh fruit to sweet dough

For best results, it's best to limit the amount of fruit to about 50% of the amount of flour in the recipe, by volume. For example, if your Favorite scone recipe calls for 2 cups of flour, use up to 1 cup of diced berries or fruit (fresh, macerated, or ripe). If you have roasted or macerated the fruit, measure it after preparation, just before adding it to the dough.

If you have washed the fruits, make sure they are completely dry; you don't want to add more juice to the batter than the fruit already contains.

Mix all the dry ingredients thoroughly and cut in the butter (if your recipe calls for that step).

Fresh diced strawberries mixed with flour and other dry ingredients in a stainless steel bowl, with a dough scraper. — Tossing berries or cut fruit into the dry ingredients is easier than trying to work them into the batter after any liquid has been added.

Carefully fold the fruit into the dry ingredients, mixing until as evenly distributed as possible. You may want to use your hands here, rather than a spoon or mixer, to avoid crushing any fragile fruit.

Finished scone dough showing plenty of fresh diced strawberries ready to be shaped. — Notice how these diced strawberries hold their shape in the batter and don't “bleed” the juice.

Mix the liquids together (beaten eggs, cream or milk, vanilla, etc.) and add them all at once. Use one bowl scraper OR The Danish Dough Movement to gently and thoroughly moisten the dry ingredients and bring everything together into a cohesive dough, being careful not to overwork.

Fresh strawberry batter pressed into the wells of a standard pan, ready to bake. — or grill pan it makes handling the dough super easy and gives perfectly shaped strips.

If the dough is soft and manageable, use a Scoop and muffin to beat in mounds on a or greased parchment– aligned Cooking sheet. If the dough is stiffer, shape according to your recipe directions or press into a shape grill pan.

Fresh strawberry sheets cooling on a metal cooling rack. — For 1 cup of diced strawberries (here they are added to our classic Scones recipe), toss 1 1/3 cups of diced berries with 2 tablespoons of sugar, wait 1 hour and drain. The volume of berries will be reduced by 25%, to about one cup.

Bake the cups according to the directions. And enjoy them fresh from the oven, when possible: If the fruit has runny a bit too much, the berries will be tastier warm than cold.

Bonus tips for berries

Do you want the taste of fresh fruit without the potential obstacles of chopped fruit or berries? If you don't mind the discoloration in your berries, try pureeing fresh fruit and substituting it for some of the juices in your recipe: This recipe for Strawberries & Cream Scones is a good example.

THESE Strawberries & Cream Scones you have a slight pink tint from the pureed berries in the batter.

Color outside the lines: Try Fuyu persimmon, kiwi fruit, star fruit, hard cantaloupe, “Foster” bananas (diced and ripe) or another fruit beyond the ordinary. You may discover your new favorite fruit!

What about using frozen fruit instead of fresh? You'll want to thaw the fruit first, then dry it; for details, see Frozen fruit vs. fresh fruit in baking.

Uh-oh, did you wait too long to ripen your fruit, and now it's past its prime? Look how to use sad looking fruit in bars, cakes, ice creams and more.

Cover picture (Strawberries & Cream Scones) by Liz Neily.

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