Raspberry, king of the berries

Small things.

Starbucks has discontinued my favorite raspberry scones. Lacking a pictoral representation of them, I would describe them as delicious thick biscuit-y triangles, with a scoop of raspberry (truly the king of berries) jam on top and center. I would always eat the scone-y parts and save (and savor) the center for last, making, in essence, a little cup of scone filled with red sugar and seeds. Mmmmm.

But Starbucks, in in finite corporate bottom-line but customer-oriented thinking, has discontinued those. Last week I inquired of my local baristas whither raspberry scones, and was told that they were going to be replaced by… strawberry scones. My mind wandered but truly, my imaginings were limited to… um… imagining a raspberry scone, only with a distinctly strawberry flavor to the dollop in the middle. OK, I suppose I can live with that.

Today, however, they finally had these strawberry scones in stock. And they’re so much better in some ways and messier in other ways. Instead of a well of jam, the scones have been sliced horizontally into a top and a bottom half, and the strawberry jam has been spread across the entire top of the bottom half. A layer, an entire layer, of strawberry jam. And then, as if that wasn’t messy enough, the whole has been sprinkled with a light… um… sprinkling of powdered sugar, always a consternation to me, a man who often wears only black.

So if you see a guy dressed all in black, with a light sprinkling of powdered sugar on his shirt and lap, and smiling while he brushes away the powdered sugar, walking around downtown, that’s me.