Biscuits X2

Today was baking group at the clubhouse, and we made biscuits.  The original plan was to make scones to go with tea, but I discovered there were no eggs, so we made biscuits instead.  They turned out great!  We added cheese, dried chives, and dill to the mix, and the flavours were great.  Here they are.

When I got home, I decided to keep the baking momentum going and make something to accompany my cabbage rolls.  I was out of bread, too.  So, I decided to make this recipe, Pull-Apart Drop Biscuits.  They involved a very wet but rich dough that was very sticky to work with, but they turned out fantastically!  I was super impressed.  Both biscuit recipes came from the May 2010 issue of Canadian Living Magazine.  The above recipe is the Flaky Biscuits, and the recipe for the Pull-Apart Drop Biscuits is here.

Cooking with Betty Crackpot: Corn Bread

I needed something to go with a killer soup I made the other night (recipe upcoming) and decided to make cornbread.  I love things made with cornmeal.  My mom had a great recipe, but I doubt it came from Betty because this was underwhelming.  I even have a way better recipe. 

In typical Betty Crocker cake-ish fashion, you just dump everything into a bowl and beat the crap out of it.  But that wasn't the problem; it was just not very interesting.  I will admit to over-baking it slightly, which might have accounted for the dryness, too.  But, still, I don't think I'll be making this again.

Corn Bread (page 49 of Betty Crocker's Cookbook)

1 cup yellow cornmeal
1 cup flour
2 tbsp sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup milk
1/4 shortening or butter (I used butter)
1 egg

Preheat oven to 425F.  Grease or line with parchment paper an 8x8" square baking pan.  Throw all ingredients in a bowl and beat the crap of out them ("blend for 20 seconds.  Beat vigourously for 1 minute").  Pour into pan and bake 20 - 25 minutes or until golden brown.

There are two variations.  The first is to make this into 12 muffins.  The second is "Double Corn Bread" which directs the baker to prepare a 9x9" pan, use 2 eggs, and stir in 1 can (7 - 8 oz) whole kernel corn, well-drained, into the batter.  This actually appeals to me more than the regular recipe.

Meh!

Grapefruit Scones

I have a confession: I love Cobs - love it.  And I live within walking distance of one, which is both a blessing and a curse!  They have great baking and great breads.  I love their cinnamon buns and I really love their scones.  I was walking by there the other day while running errands at the mall and of course I had to go and stare longingly at their products...but on a budget, I couldn't justify purchasing any scones, but I knew I had scone ingredients at home, so when I got home I got busy.

I have a great recipe for scones that has garnered me a lot of compliments over the years.  It's a lemon scone recipe that I've changed up to become orange scones, orange & blueberry scones, and probably some others.  Since I love baking with citrus, I decided to go with that theme again and make...grapefruit scones.  I did, after all, have a bunch of very nice, large ruby reds on hand.

Here is the scone recipe.  I have no idea where it originated, but I've had it for ages.

Lemon/Orange/Grapefruit/Citrus Scones

2 cups all purpose flour
1/3 cup white sugar
2 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2/3 cup cold butter, cubed
2 eggs
1/3 cup 10% cream
1 tbsp finely grated citrus zest
1/4 cup citrus juice

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.  Cut in butter and sablé with fingers until mixture is crumbly.

In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, cream, zest, and citrus juice.  Pour over dry ingredients and gently incorporate until you get a sticky dough.

Turn out onto a well-floured surface.  With floured hands, form into a ball and knead gently 8 times.  Place on parchment-lined baking sheet.  Pat into a circle 3/4" circle, then cut into 8 wedges.  Do not separate.

Glaze options: brush with citrus juice & sprinkle with sugar, or as I did, brush with an egg wash and sprinkle with citrus-flavoured sugar.

Bake at 350F until golden.

For the citrus sugar, I had 2 grapefruits zested.  I used half of the zest in the scones and shook the other half in a container with about 1/2 - 3/4 cups of sugar until well-combined (I credit my friend Jodi for giving me this idea).

These turned out great, though the scone itself could have used more grapefruit zest.  But they were a hit with my roommates!  The grapefruit sugar topping was awesome.  These scones are not the texture of Cobs' scones, which are more doughy.  I'm not sure which I prefer, but you can never beat homemade scones right out of the oven, that's for sure.

Shindig Rundown

Yesterday I had a small gathering at my place as a kind of going-away party, with the ulterior motive of using up as many of my leftover baking ingredients as possible before I move - all part of OPC (Operation Pantry Clear-out). It was lovely to just bake and bake for a couple of days. I realize I've been missing that in my life. However, the weather here was so hot, and continues to be, so it was a tad uncomfy to be in my kitchen for the amount of time I was. But it's OK.



Here is a shot of my spread:





So, on the white platter, top left, we have these rum & chocolate chip blondies, only without pecans because I'd already used them all up. Also on that plate are sour cherry & chocolate chip brownies. That recipe is basically my usual blondie recipe, only I replaced 1/2 cup of the flour with 1/2 cup of sifted cocoa powder. They are amazing!



In the pottery bowl next to that platter (the pottery was made by my super-talented potter friend, S) are these cookies. They were great.



Bottom row, left, we have a rhubarb tart. I made the pâte brisée recipe from Earth to Table, which you can see here. Incidentally, that's the same pumpkin pie recipe I used for the pumpkin pie you see in the bottom row, right, in the photo. It's sooooooooo gooooooood! I love that pumpkin pie recipe! It was a big hit at the shindig yesterday. For the rhubarb tart, I used frozen rhubarb, that, as it thawed, shrunk into probably just less than 4 cups of rhubarb; very annoying. But it was perfect for a tart, and I decided to do a lattice top. The rhubarb tart was a hit, too. The filling also contained 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 tsp ginger, 1 tsp cinnamon, and about 1 tbsp of cornstarch.



Finally, between the two fruit pies/tarts, we have a basic banana bread. Very basic. I got this recipe from my friend Anita, who made this regularly when we were in university together. It's been my go-to recipe ever since because it's super simple and super moist.



Anita's Banana Bread



2 ripe bananas, mashed

2 eggs

1/2 cup butter, melted

1 cup brown sugar

1 1/4 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

dash of salt

1/2 cup walnut pieces, optional



Beat the eggs with a whisk and add butter, brown sugar, and bananas until well-combined. Sift in the flour, soda, and salt until the batter comes together. Add nuts, if using. Pour into a greased or lined loaf pan and bake at 350F for about an hour.



Everyone went home with a baking doggy bag. I'm leaving soon after all - I didn't want to keep any of it.



Up next, my trip to the Maritimes, Wolfville, Nova Scotia and Charlottetown, PEI, to visit family, I just know there is going to be absolutely TONS to food blog about! I can't wait!

Scones for a Crowd

This is a recipe we make weekly at work, and they all go up to the hospital coffee shop. We alternate between blueberry one week and cranberry the next. This is a pretty good recipe, I have to say. It makes four big rounds that we cut into eight triangles.

Cream Scones

9 cups flour
4 tbsp baking powder
1 1/3 cups sugar
2 tsp salt
2 cups butter
8 eggs
3 cups cream or milk
egg wash & granulated sugar for topping
blueberries, cranberries - frozen - optional

Whisk together the dry ingredients and cut in the butter until it's small pea-size. In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs and cream. Make a well in the dry ingredients and add the wet until combined. Add fruit at this point. It's always better to use frozen fruit so the juices don't saturate the batter with tons of colour. It's an aesthetic thing. Don't overwork the dough, but make sure you get a nice consistent dough. It will be sticky. Turn it out onto a well-floured surface and cut into four even pieces. Pat each piece into a circle about 1" thick. Place on greased baking sheet and cut into desired number of triangles. Glaze with egg wash & sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 350F until golden brown and cooked through.

Enjoy!

Magazine Monday #77: Flaky Biscuits

Wow, two recipes in two days - go me!

I just whipped some borscht out of the freezer for dinner tonight and needed something to go with it, so I flipped through my clipped recipes and found a biscuit recipe I hadn't tried yet.

This is it. It is, once more, from Canadian Living, this time the May 2010 issue.

I added fresh dill from my AeroGarden and some grated cheddar cheese, and they were fantastic hot out of the oven! This is one of the nicest biscuits I've ever made, I think. Definitely keeping this in my repertoire!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

Sometimes I crave stuff, and since I've been icing my shoulder because I have some tendonitis in my right deltoid, I have been craving pumpkin. This might have to do with the fact that I am using frozen blocks of pumpkin I stashed away over a year ago to ice my shoulder with. I have also been craving chocolate, and I do love pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, which I have made before. It's a great combination. But, I wanted muffins! So I searched around the net and found this recipe on In Erika's Kitchen. I made the recipe this afternoon.

I halved the spices (1 tsp each) because I didn't want such strong spices overwhelming the chocolate, and I used plain white sugar. These turned out really well and made quite cakey muffins. But the recipe was so large I got a bonus pumpkin chocolate chip loaf out of it as well. I baked this in my largest loaf pan, but I think because the batter was so delicate, it didn't have enough structure to support itself as it rose during baking and therefore it never rose in the middle. I topped it with some sugar crystals.

Still the flavour is there! A really great treat and it hit the spot. I'm going to freeze the loaf to take to a family member's place on the weekend.

Magazine Monday #75: Three Seed Biscuits

This recipe from Canadian Living's November 2010 issue caught my eye. Biscuits can really be indulgent in my world because they are so buttery, so fluffy, so good. These looked healthy, so I could enjoy them with a little less guilt than normal. I made them yesterday to go with the borscht I made & froze last week. They were excellent! I didn't have any sunflower seeds on hand, so I put in poppyseeds. Also, I didn't have any wheat germ, so I substituted quick oats.

The biscuits were great, nice & crunchy, and right out of the oven, they were a perfect accompaniment to the soup! This morning, I had a left over one with eggs for breakfast, and I have one more to enjoy later on, perhaps with some jam.

This keeper recipe is here.

Magazine Monday #70: Lemon Loaves!

OK, I got a great deal on lemons from the States recently (yes, you can bring certain types of fresh produce across the border, but stop off at Canada Customs on the way down to find out what you can & cannot bring home; tropical fruits are OK) - something like 2lbs for $3.50. This is an unreal deal since lemons are ridiculously expensive up here and if I'm lucky, I might be able to find a 2/99¢ sale, but I guarantee you the lemons will be crappy.

So, I brought all these lemons home and proceeded to not really know what to do with them. I'm a single person who lives alone; I was tempted to make a lemon pie, this one or a meringue, but seriously, I didn't want to eat it all myself. So, I made stuff I could freeze and pull out if I have company (which doesn't happen often).

The first thing I made was this lemon poppy seed loaf from Canadian Living. The original recipe has them as mini bundt cakes, but there is a variation in the recipe saying you can make it into a loaf, too. What issue is a mystery to me; the date was clipped off when I took the recipe from the magazine and the web site doesn't mention the date, either. Delicious! But a warning: there is too much batter for the specified loaf pan. I wound up getting a really ugly-looking, flat-topped loaf because the batter came right up to the rim of the loaf pan. But the texture and richness was lovely.

On a lemon roll, a couple of days later, I decided to make another Canadian Living recipe, this time the Lemon Yogurt Loaf from the September 2010 issue of the magazine. I had a bit of a disaster, though: my oven element began sparking away most alarmingly, and caught some piece of debris on fire. The loaves were almost done, but not quite, so I had to stick them in the toaster oven to finish baking. Disaster averted, but now I'm ovenless until the element can be replaced, and since the whole appliance is a total dinosaur, I'm worried they don't make the part anymore. (Check out The Dino here.) Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of these loaves before I wrapped them up tightly and put them in the freezer!

Oh, I also made a roast chicken with lemon, but that is a post for another time!

Buttermilk Biscuits

Here is my latest NaNoWriMo update, including excerpt!

This is the recipe for the biscuits I made with the seafood chowder in yesterday's post. I used the technique of grating the butter with a grater, as I learned in the pastry recipe for that no-bake pumpkin pie I made around Thanksgiving last month. It worked like a charm! These biscuits were wonderful. I have no idea where I got this recipe from, but I've had it for a long time. As I mentioned yesterday, I used some lemon pepper in them for a bit of zip.

Buttermilk Biscuits

2 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
1 cup buttermilk

1. Whisk together dry ingredients. Grate the butter into the mixture & toss to combine. Add buttermilk and mix just enough to blend together. Do not overmix!

2. Roll or pat dough to desired thickness - anywhere from 1/2" - almost 1" (but be aware that the thicker you pat the dough, the longer these will take to cook through). Cut. Bake at 425F until done.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Loaf

Ah, the continuing saga of my wonky appetite! Why I wanted this flavour combination of all things right now is beyond me, but want it I did. I knew I wanted something with chocolate in it, but not too much chocolate. And I was craving pumpkin...Yes, I am aware it isn't pumpkin season, but luckily I had some in the freezer. I loved the Pumpkin, Chocolate Chip, & Cranberry Cookies I made previously, but wasn't in the mood to make cookies. I could have sworn that in one of my recent food magazines I'd seen a recipe for chocolate chop loaf, but I searched and searched & couldn't find it. So, I resorted to Google and found this recipe from an old issue of Gourmet. It looked perfect for what I was desiring.

And it turned out excellently! My oven was a bit off, so the crust got a little dark & chewy in places, but this loaf/cake had a lovely texture and the subtle spicing was very nice. I didn't use pumpkin pie spice because I don't have any, so I used my own combination of cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, and all spice. Worked great. My house filled up with the most amazing smell as it baked...

I can't wait for pumpkin season!

Magazine Monday #40: Sour Cherry Loaf

I often bemoan the fact that, living as I do in the middle of nowhere, I have less access to exotic ingredients than a lot of people living in larger centres do. Case in point: sour cherries. We get black cherries in season from the Okanagan, which is great. Sometimes, if you want to pay the ridiculous prices, you can even get them out of season. We get marashino cherries in syrup. But I have never seen a single sour cherry in these parts until last week, when I happened upon a jar while cruising the aisles of Save-on Foods in Nelson. I wasn't even looking for them; I was just wandering by the foreign foods section, and out they popped. I didn't even think about it; I just put them in my basket, noting the $4.99 price tag (they are a product of Bulgaria, I later read on the label. I'm surprised they weren't more). I got them home and proceeded to agonize over what to do with them.

Last week I also received my June issue of Gourmet, and in it was a recipe for Raspberry Buttermilk Cake. The old wheels began turning in my brain (it happens from time to time) and I decided to make a Sour Cherry Buttermilk Cake instead. The wheels continuted to turn, and I went on to decide that a Sour Cherry Buttermilk Loaf would be even better. (The reasoning behind this is purely psychological; I would be far more amenable to having a loaf kicking around the house as opposed to a cake. If this seems purely irrational to you, join the club.)

So, on the hottest day of the year yet, I fired up the oven (as much as you can fire up a 30 year old electric oven) and baked. The recipe I used is here. In addition to replacing the raspberries with sour cherries and making this into a loaf instead of a cake, I also took the opportunity to try out some of my Billington's sugar crystals that were part of a box of treasures Jodi sent me in March.

The result was both ugly and wonderful. The ugly part was that the loaf looked terrible: flat and overly browned. It looked quite like a brick, actually.
Not quite what I was expecting. I was also not expecting this:
The cherries sunk right from the top of the loaf directly to the bottom. Weird.

The wonderful part was that this cake tasted awesome. Next time, I'll at least follow the instructions and bake it in a cake pan (though the recipe specifies a 9" round, I think the recipe is too small for this size pan; I've had this problem with some other recipes from Gourmet and/or Bon Appetit. The cake pan is too big for the amount of batter you get, so I use an 8").

Whole Wheat Oatmeal Pancakes

I often feel guilty about eating pancakes - except on Pancake Tuesday - because they're such a junky meal. I don't eat them that often as a result. But, when I came across this recipe on a new food blog I discovered called Colleen's Recipes, I was wowed. Guilt-free pancakes! Who'd've thunk it?

The recipe can be found here.

The only substitution I made was an equal amount of maple syrup instead of the honey. I am low on honey and am hoarding it because it's expensive. Otherwise, these were great pancakes. Though a bit crumbly, they still managed to be light and cakey despite the whole grains.

Thanks Colleen!