Cook of the Month: June Little, Scones

Here's a little story.

It's the saga of June Little's scones . . . a tale about the Little family and their matriarch, who has managed to mold her sweet dough into a Fourth of July food fest.Every Independence Day, Little orchestrates a backyard breakfast that brings her children, (grand and great included) to feast on scones.

"It started when the kids were just little," she recalls. "And now we've been doing it for 15 or 20 years. It hasn't been every single Fourth of July, but most of them."

Little's back yard is where the morning meal usually takes place, the perfect shady spot for the breakfast.

For ease of preparation, she uses an electric frypan (filled halfway with vegetable oil) to fry the scones. She says that cooking outdoors is convenient.

"So there's no running in and out of the house."

According to Little, her scones came from "just a buttery roll recipe" she picked up from a dinner group she and her husband belonged to.

"The dough is kind of rich and has a little more butter than I put in my rolls," she says.

The scone breakfast routine began after the Littles attended a scone fry with the dinner club. The children were invited to the daytime event.

"The kids thought it was heavenly," Little said. "It was fun; the scones were such a delightful thing. I'd never had them!"

She decided after witnessing her children's enthusiastic reaction to the fried dough that she'd incorporate scones into her own repertoire of home cookin'.

The scone phenomenon grew when the family began taking weeklong vacations to Capistrano, Calif., each summer, where they rented private homes.

It turned out that they got the beach house the same block of time each summer - the week of July Fourth.

"I had memorized the scone recipe and I thought . . . why not?"

Little recalls, "The homes were right there, on the beach, with the decks close to the water."

Thus, a Little tradition was heightened by a dash of beachfront and breakfast. Scone-centered.

The last time the expanded gang returned to Capistrano to swallow scones, six homes were needed to accommodate all of them.

The beach venue with six separate kitchens created an opportunity for each of Little's children and their families to dabble in the fine art of breakfasting.