Strawberry scones (food FAIL)

I recently bought a big bag of frozen strawberries in attempt to curb my sweets cravings. Then I realized I crave refined sugar, so I decided to make something sweet with my strawberries using things I had laying around the house.

Enter strawberry scones.

I got the recipe from Tyler Florence, and I don't entirely recommend the recipe for reasons you'll see below. But I already took the freakin' pictures, so deal with it.

You will need:

2 cups all-purpose flour
3 Tbsps sugar, plus more for sprinkling scones
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp kosher salt
3/4 stick cold unsalted butter, cubed
1 1/2 cups fresh mixed berries (I used my frozen strawberries)
3/4 cup buttermilk, plus more to brush scones

There were several things I did differently in this recipe, and they may all explain why this recipe was a major FAIL for me. First, the linked recipe above has an accompanying Orange Honey Butter from which the buttermilk for the scones is derived. I didn't have heavy cream, so I made my own buttermilk (see below). Second, I did not have a food processor, so I used my hands.

First, preheat your oven to 400 F.

If you are sophisticated and have a food processor, add your flour, sugar, salt, baking soda and baking powder to the food processor. If you don't, dump it in a big bowl. Add the cubes of butter and pulse until you have the texture of coarse bread crumbs. Or, like me, work the butter in until you get finger cramps and a close approximation of bread crumbs.

Close enough.

Next, add buttermilk. If you did not make the Orange Honey Butter recipe, and you do not have buttermilk in the house, you can make your own by combining 1 cup of regular milk with 1 Tbsp of vinegar and allowing that to sit for 10 minutes. (Thanks, Cook's Thesaurus!)

Stir to combine, and as the dough comes together, add the berries.

This may actually have been my next mistake, as I think the berries were supposed to be folded in prior to it forming such a nice lump. Because of this, the next steps were really gross and messy as I tried to force the frozen strawberries (which at this point were getting soft) into the dough. Hence, no pictures. If I had a slightly weaker stomach, I don't think I would have been able to consume the final product having seen the gross wet pink dough that was that last step.

ANYWAY...drop spoonfuls of your gross dough onto a parchment lined sheet. Brush with buttermilk and sprinkle sugar on top. Or if your dough is already ridiculously wet with frozen strawberry juice an your tears, just sprinkle the damn sugar without the buttermilk.

Bake until puffy and golden brown, about 17 to 20 minutes.

Believe it or not, this was the best looking one.

The scones came out a little dense, and the dough around the berries seemed a little undercooked, while the rest of it was a little dry and overcooked. Again, it could have been due to all those changes I made, but I likely won't be retrying this recipe.

Anyone have a good scone recipe they can share?