For the love of goat cheese
Ask Chef Stephanie what her favorite cheese happens to be. Actually ask her what her favorite food is, and she will easily smile and tell you that she loves goat cheese. How fortunate that in the community she lives in there is a farm in Leelanau county that pasture raises goats and makes the most delicious goat cheese on the planet! Idyll Farms is a goat farm and creamery in Northport Michigan that creates some of the healthiest and tastiest award winning artisanal goat cheese, and they do it all in-house too!
Velvety, tangy, lightly tart, goat cheese complements and enhances the fruits of harvest time. Chef Stephanie likes to spread goat cheese on her spent grain toast every morning at breakfast, and then top it off with fruit preserves like apricot jam, or fresh peaches and a touch of just picked basil from the garden.
This is where the inspiration came to make her newest variety of her well known scones. When friends from Idyll Farms dropped off a case of goat cheese to play with they also added an invitation to create and share a recipe online in a contest. The deal is whoever enters and gets the most “likes” on their social media page for their photo and recipe, has the opportunity to win more goat cheese!!! Imagine the excitement for our pastry chef as she creates her scones with a favorite ingredient, and has the chance to win more goat cheese to play and invent in the kitchen.
You can order these scones at S2S all Labor day weekend. Call ahead to order to make sure we have them, as they typically sell out early each day. Then vote online by liking this post on instagram and facebook.
Thank you to the goats and farmers at Idyll Farms for creating such an awesome chevre products in your creamery for us, and for sharing it so that our customers can enjoy too!
Ripe nectarine and blueberry with Idyll Farms goat cheese scones
By: Stephanie Wiitala
Makes 1 dozen scones
- All purpose flour – 4 cups
- Baking powder – 1 tbsp
- Baking soda – 1/4 teaspoon
- Salt – 1/2 tsp
- Granulated sugar – 1 cup
- Cold unsalted butter – 1 cup cut into small cubes
- Heavy cream – 1 cup
- Sour cream – 1/3 cup
- Egg – 1 large
- Idyll Farm goat cheese – 1/3 cup sliced into cubes or crumbled
- Nectarines – 2 whole cut into small/medium dice
- Blueberries – 1/3 cup (you can add a few more if you like)
Preheat oven to 325 degrees
In a bowl bring all together the all-purpose flour with baking powder, baking soda, sugar and salt – combine. Cut the butter into small pieces and add to the flour mixture with your hands or you can use a mixer with paddle attachment on low speed, incorporating the butter until it makes a course mix- its ok if a few small butter chunks exist.
Add nectarines, blueberries and goat cheese to the dry mix and gently mix in until the ingredients are dispersed throughout the dry mix – will still be very crumbly looking (do not overmix, you just want to make sure the fruit and cheese is evenly added)
Combine and whisk together the egg, sour cream and heavy cream in a separate bowl. Pour into the bowl with the dough a little at a time and use a fork to bring together or if using a mixer turn the paddle on and off until it is just loosely combined.
Mound the dough on the work surface and, using the heel of your hand or a pastry scraper, push it together very gently. Press it into a 10 inch round, smoothing the top. Press the sides of your hands against the sides of the dough to straighten the edges. You may need to flip the dough over once to make sure that there is not any dry ingredients caught underneath that did not get incorporated.
Line up a baking sheet with parchment paper. Using a chef’s knife, cut the round disc of dough into to make 12 pieces.
Preheat the oven to 325F (convection) or 350F (standard). Line a sheet pan with parchment paper.
Arrange the scones evenly on sheet pan. Bake for 20 minutes in a convection oven, or 28 to 30 minutes in a standard oven, until lightly golden brown on top and cooked through.