Bikram Baking: Ginger Chocolate Chunk Scones

When I have my period (I know, first the mouse droppings, now the period, can I be any more unappetizing? Unless that’s your thing…) I crave 3 things; ginger, chocolate, punching people.

Unfortunately, I can’t punch people. I don’t even really want to because I generally dislike physical contact. But I can take my aggressions out in the form of baking. Even if it is 98 degrees out and I have no air conditioning. I just think of it as similar to Bikram Yoga.

“Bikram Yoga, also known as Hot Yoga is ideally practiced in a room heated to 105°F (40.5°C) with a humidity of 50%.”

All of your tensions just kind of rise to the surface and you take it out on your product, in this case Ginger Chocolate Scones, ultimately resulting in a calm state of bliss. Scones are a perfect subject for Bikram Baking, because they are pretty forgiving and may take even better to impatience, frustration and lack of precision.

Preheat your oven, not to 350F, 350F is for weaklings. No. To 400F. You can take it.

Violently throw all of the your dry ingredients into a mixing bowl, fork a bunch of mise en place because the ingredients are so few anyway. Forget an actual sifter, just swish it all around with a fork, making nail-on-chalkboard noises as you scrape against the bowl. All the while make sure you are focusing on everyone that’s ever wronged you. Your racist 8th grade dance teacher? Fuck. Her. Screeeeeech. Your FedEx guy that refuses to ring your bell? Hope your polyester uniform is comfortable in this heat, sucker. Scraaaaatch. Dick Cheney? Well, let’s save that one for when we’re making pandowdy.

Now take that chocolate bar and just smash it with your knife. Remember that guy who said that vegans produce more methane than cows do? Your chocolate chunks should be just about the right size now.

By now some tensions have been resolved and the oven is preheated. You want out. But you know that just a few moments more and nirvana or some facsimile will be achieved. Add your wet ingredients, but eyeball those bastards because you can’t quite be trusted with glass at this point. Mix it up quickly. But channel all that impatience because you don’t want to over-mix. Is almost everything just moistened? Are there dustings of flour still left on the surface? Well, good.

Now breathe. Get it together. Gently fold in the chocolate chunks. Yes, it’s getting hot in here, but you’re not in a cramped city kitchen anymore, you’re in the Bahamas. Long before Colombus came and forked everything up.

Your baking sheet. Pristine and glistening like a sea, with a few nicks and the rough spots of history. Lightly grease it.

You have your wits about you now enough to grab a 1/4 measuring cup or perhaps an ice cream scoop. Of the earth but not attached to it. Grease that, too. Now scoop up that dough, however it falls, nice big sloppy scoops, and drop them out on your sheet, close together is fine, they will fit for it is their destiny.

Right then. Still a little anger left in you. Let it manifest itself as hope. Grab pinches of pebbly turbinado sugar and fling them onto your scones like so much fairy dust.

Now get those the oven for 15 minutes and find a room with air conditioning and wait. What are you crazy? Oh, and get someone else to clean up the mess you made.

Ginger Chocolate Chunk Scones Pile Up

Ingredients:

3 cups flour

2 tablespoons baking powder

1 1/2 tablespoons ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

pinch allspice

1/2 cup turbinado sugar, plus extra for sprinkling

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 1/4 cups non-dairy milk

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

About 5 ounces chocolate