Scones, Scones and More Scones

It was hard to escape the scones at San Francisco’s Moscone Center last weekend during the three-day Winter International Fancy Food & Confection Show. There were scone mixes and frozen scones, scones studded with cranberries, with nuts, with blueberries, with you-name-it.

Waffle mixes (malted milk is still hot), oatmeal (a faster-cooking variety from Ireland), grandmother-style jams in nonthreatening flavors (huckleberry, boysenberry) seemed designed to coax folks to stay home, turn on the oven and grease the griddle. Family values seemed to rule the aisles--and the competition for the year’s best products, in which there were 1,496 entries.

In the contest for Outstanding Design, it wasn’t a statuesque bottle of balsamic vinegar that grabbed top billing but a maple syrup from Vermont in an etched bottle with the graceful lines of a Cognac bottle--if you ignored the easy-grip handle and no-drip neck.

The Outstanding Beverage of the show was not a sleek martini or feisty margarita but a root beer from Massachusetts.

And in the Outstanding Cookie category, it was a Brooklyn-based housewife-turned-businesswoman who took the cake. Steve’s Mom Inc., the dream of Suellen Schussel, cranks out 11 varieties of rugelach, using her mother-in-law’s recipe. Schussel’s raspberry version in hand-rolled sour cream pastry got the universal thumbs up. Wonder if Suellen wears an apron with ruffles.