Upside Down Orange Scones

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Sauce:
Place butter, sugar, orange juice and zest in a small sauce pot. Bring to a simmer and allow to boil for 3-5 minutes. The mixture should reduce and thicken slightly.

Orange Supremes:
While the syrup is simmering, supreme your oranges if using. To do this, cut the top and bottom poles off the orange. With the orange sitting flat on one of the cut sides, run your knife between the flesh and the skin, just under the pithy white part. You will be cutting off strips of the rind as you work around the orange leaving the fruit intact. Next, hold the orange in your palm over bowl to catch juice. Using your knife, slice lengthwise (pole to pole) between 1 segment and the membrane until you reach the center of the fruit. Make a similar slice on the other side of the segment thus removing a piece of orange from the surrounding membranes. Repeat, working your way around the orange.

Scones:
Pulse pancake mix, baking powder, xanthan gum and butter in a food processor until the texture of coarse meal with a few pea sized pieces. (You can use your fingers for this as well).

Transfer to a mixing bowl and stir in the buttermilk until a shaggy dough forms. "Knead" very gently to bring together - the dough will be a little sticky. 

Press dough out on a lightly floured surface (we use sweet rice flour) until 3/4" thick (or whatever thickness you want). Use a cutter that is the same diameter as your muffin pan to punch out rounds.

Assembly:
**For this recipe, I use a standard size, as opposed to an oversized, muffin pan to get 12 scones. You can use any size or shape pan you want, it will just alter the number of finished scones you get.

Arrange orange slices in the bottom of the muffin pan. I like to overlap 2-4 segments depending on their size.
** You can omit the orange segments and just the use the sauce. The scones still turn out delicious.

Next, spoon 1-2 T. orange syrup over the orange segments in each well. It should cover the slices and go about 1/4 up the pan. You will have sauce leftover which is what you want.

Place your cut scones on top of the orange and syrup mixture. Bake for 15-20 minutes depending on the size of your scones.

Let cool for about 5 minutes then invert the muffin pan onto a platter turning the scones out while still warm. If you wait until they are completely cool, it is more likely the sugary sauce will stick to the bottom making them harder to get out of the pan.

Drizzle with a some of the leftover sauce right before serving!