It’s January, and over the holidays you may have put on a few pounds. But before you decide to go all Janez Brajkovic on us don’t forget you still need some serious carbs to fuel those long workouts in the freezing cold. Why not swap out the oatmeal one weekend and hook yourself up with something really good, like some homemade dark chocolate chip scones?

I have been tweaking this recipe for a few years in my quest to create the Holy Grail of baked goods (meaning it tastes really good, is reasonably healthy, is easily digested and contains dark chocolate if possible). If you follow the recipe as written you will end up with 8 scones that are 224 calories each with 4 grams of fat and 7.5 grams of protein*. If you don’t want to bake and don’t care about the healthy requirement see my New York City Scone round up here.

15 min prep time, 15 bake time.
Preheat oven to 425F
Combine all the dry goods in a bowl and mix them
Gradually, blend in the buttermilk until dough is uniform
Blend in coarsely chopped dark chocolate
Just before you are about lay dough out, remove butter from fridge and quickly chop it up into small pieces. Disperse disperse them evenly throughout the dough. The dough should have spots of un-blended butter inside of it.**
Lay the dough out onto a lightly greased cookie sheet in a 10" circle. Score the dough into 8 pieces (like a pizza).
Bake 12-15 minutes — edges should be golden brown.

1 cup whole wheat flour
2 cups all purpose flour
2 tablespoons baking Powder
1 teaspoon course Kosher salt
1 1/4 cups low fat buttermilk
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/2 tablespoons butter (cold as possible, don’t remove from fridge until you are about to use it!)
1/4-1/3 cup Turbinado sugar, granulated
30 grams (or 1.1 OZ) of a 70% dark chocolate bar – coarsely chopped (I like 73% dark Chocolove available at Whole Foods)

*If you decide to eat all the cones in one setting, and I know some of you will, you’ll be taking in 1783 calories, 32 grams of fat and 62 grams of protein, or about 1/2 the calorie requirements of doing the CRCA New Year’s Day ride.

**These unblended butter bits work like the balloons inside a monocoque carbon fiber frame layup. Once put in the oven, they melt away and leave cavities that gives the scones their unique and airy texture.

 Janez Brajkovic