TWD/BWD: Biscuits

Is there anything better than a fresh hot biscuit? Any day? Any occasion? Nope! Nothing!

And trust Dorie to come up with a biscuit with just a little twang to the taste. Cottage Cheese Biscuits.

I am not a fan of cottage cheese. I’ve tried it. Several times. Just cannot like it. But in these biscuits..

I only made 1/2 of the recipe which gave me 5 2.5″ biscuits. I didn’t know if we (or The Man) would like them so I didn’t want to make a whole bunch. That will change next time I make these.

The recipe is on page 46 of Dorie Greenspan’s Baking with Dorie Sweet Salty and Simple. I also found the recipe HERE but with added herbs which would be delicious!

How did the other Tuesdays with Dorie Bakers like these biscuits? Check them out!

Next up – French Riviera Lemon Tart!! YUM!!

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{CC#13} Starting the year on a Healthy Note

I completely missed December for Cookbook Countdown.  Between bronchitis, sinusitis, and bursitis {I was really tired of the suffix “itis“.} I didn’t get a chance to do much of anything.  I even had my  cookbook picked out with recipes.  Ah, well – there’s always NEXT December! But you can check out what all the others made in December -> December Cookbook Countdown.

So, let’s start the New Year off right.  With a cookbook that should NOT have been sitting on the shelf without use for the last year.  Low-Fat, Low-Cholesterol Cookbook from the American Heart Association.  There aren’t any exciting recipes in this book but there are lots that have been trimmed down.  So I thought I would try some.

How about some Buttermilk Biscuits to begin with?

If you notice, they don’t LOOK any different than regular buttery biscuits.  But they taste (almost) as good.  If you HAVE to have biscuits, these might be the ones.

Veggie Oil Spray
1 cup AP flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp sugar
1/8 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
1 Tbl acceptable stick margarine cut in small pieces {I used
Smart Balance}
1/3 cup low-fat buttermilk
1/4 cup fat-free plain yoghurt. {I used Greek}

Preheat the oven to 425F.
In a food processor mix together the flour baking powder, sugar, soda, and salt in a medium bowl.
Add in the margarin until small pieces form. Add in the buttermilk and yoghurtand mix until just moistened.
Turn the dough out onto a floured board, sprinkle with flour, and knead into a disk. {I needed to add a little more flour as the dough was rather wet.}
Using a rolling pin, or your hands, flatten the dough until it is a bout 1/2 inch thick. Cut out biscuits using a 2 1/2 inch or 2″ cutter.
Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until nice and golden-brown.

81 calories each. 1 mg cholesterol. Fat 1.5 gm
Low-Fat, Low-Cholesterol Cookbook page 272

I’m linking this post with Cookbook Countdown 13 hosted by Kitchen Flavours and Emily’s Cooking (Makan2).

 

{CC#9}Fluffy Biscuits

Finally, I’ve had a chance to come back to Cookbook Countdown. How I have missed it. And reading about all the other cookbooks others cook/bake from.

I am a major fan of Alton Brown. When Good Eats was on I would not miss a show. Even now, after the shows are over, I can see them on The Cooking Channel and I have a few faves that I really enjoy –

• Cheese Cake,
• Churn, Baby Churn
• Deep Purple (Eggplant)

and too many more to list here.  After Good Eats was gone AB came out with the cookbooks for the past 14 seasons.  And my family loves me because I have all three volumes.  As much as I love AB I really never cooked from the cookbooks.  So thanks, Cookbook Countdown  for ‘making’ me use another neglected cookbook. Let’s start with

GOOD EATS: THE EARLY YEARS

And with a recipe from Episode 7 – Southern Biscuits

I make a pretty good biscuit, but I never get much rise out of them {which pleases my husband – for some reason he likes FLAT biscuits!} so I was glad to see these RISE up into nice tall ones.  Lots of layers to add butter, honey, or jam.  Yep!  I do love biscuits.

12 ounces {2 cups flour}
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter {1 ounce}, chilled
2 tablespoons shortening {1 ounce}, chilled
1 cup low-fat buttermilk, chilled

• Heat oven to 450 degrees.
• In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
• Using your fingertips, rub butter and shortening into dry ingredients until mixture looks like crumbs.
• Make a well in the center and pour in the chilled buttermilk. Stir just until the dough comes together. The dough will be very sticky.
• Turn dough onto floured surface, dust top with flour and gently fold dough over on itself 5 or 6 times.
• Press into a 1-inch thick round. Cut out biscuits with a 2-inch cutter, being sure to push straight down through the dough.
• Place biscuits on baking sheet so that they just touch. Reform scrap dough, working it as little as possible and continue cutting.
• Bake until biscuits are tall and light gold on top, 15 to 20 minutes. {Makes 12}
• Devour!

GOOD EATS!

The recipe is on page 42 of Good Eats: The Early Years.

I’m linking this post with Cookbook Countdown hosted by Kitchen Flavours and Emily’s Cooking (Makan2).

 

{CC#4} Making biscuits with Thomas Keller

April!  Time for another less used cookbook to hit the spotlight.  This month for Cookbook Countdown I am cooking through Thomas Keller’s ad hot at home .  I have had this book since 2011 when it was recommended by a good friend and fellow cook/baker.  I have made only two things from it:  meatballs with pappardelle and scallion potato cakes. Both were good but then I put the book away and haven’t opened it much since.  Big Mistake!  There are some wonderful recipes in it.  It is, therefore, a perfect candidate for the 4th {my third} month of Cookbook Countdown.  ENJOY!!

I started with something simple – Buttermilk Biscuits.  I have been using Dorie’s  Basic Biscuit recipe forever so it was time for something different.  Good Call!  There were buttery (2 sticks of butter)!  And flaky.  And delicious!  Enough butter IN the biscuit you don’t really need any butter ON the biscuit.  Yeah, RIGHT!!!

Keller says to cut them 2 1/2″ and you would end up with 12 biscuits about 3/4″ high.  I patted mine to 1/2 inch and ended up with 12 for only 1/2 of the recipe.  I knew I didn’t need lots of biscuits hanging around and thought 6 would be perfect.  Ah, well… Not going to toss them 🙂

2 cups each: self-raising cake & pastry flour, all-purpose flour

1 tbsp + 1 tsp kosher salt

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup (1/2 lb/225 g) unsalted butter, cut into 1-tablespoon pieces, frozen

1-1/2 cups buttermilk + 2 tbsp for brushing

2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted, for brushing (optional)

DIRECTIONS

{CKBK Countdown} Smitten’s Maple Bacon Biscuits

For some reason The Man has been requesting biscuits with dinner – a lot.  We seldom ate biscuits with our meals.  Just not something we did.  We do now!  I usually make just a basic biscuit but I decided to try out something new.  I ended up with Deb’s maple bacon biscuits from her book Smitten Kitchen. {the book I am cooking from for February’s Cookbook Countdown.

What we have here is a biscuit filled with maple syrup and bacon pieces.  Are you drooling yet?  I have to admit The Man wasn’t sure about these when I described them but he didn’t complain when I served them.

The only change I made – I used 1/2 whole wheat flour in the mix instead of all AP flour.  It made for a little more chewyness.

I won’t put the recipe – you really need to get Deb’s book – but it is a basic  buttermilk biscuit recipe with 3 slices of crispy bacon and 1/4 cup maple sugar mixed in. Good Stuff!!!

“I’m linking this post with Cookbook Countdown hosted by Kitchen Flavours and Emily’s Cooking (Makan2) Foray“.

 

{SRC} Cooking from West to East

There are a lot of us who were raised in one place and ended up in another. We never forget the foods of our early years. We add to it from the new places we live. We change. We adapt. Our tastes change but never our love of our ‘native’ foods. This is the case for Julie who is The Texan New Yorker. She was my ‘assignment’ for January with the Secret Recipe Club.

Julie proclaims herself as a Formerly Picky Eater. But after deciding she wanted to eat healthier she learned to cook. She was ‘reared’, as we say in the South, in Dallas then moved to the East coast . He recipes are a great combination of Texas and New York and all the adaptations in between.

I have found over the years that just picking ONE recipe from hundreds is IMPOSSIBLE. I count myself lucky if I can whittle it down to 20 or so that I HAVE to make.

So, Julie, here is what I HAD to make from your wonderful Texas to New York recipes.

It was a little chilly in December and January so a nice thick soup was very comforting. In this case Julie’s Broccoli Cheese Soup

Can I tell you how delicious this was? Full of cheddar cheese and broccoli. I made it directly from her recipe except I sprinkled some additional cheese and some raw broccoli on top.

And what is soup if you cannot have it with some kind of bread. A grilled cheese sandwich is my usual go to with soup but with all the cheese in the soup I needed something to accent the flavor not dilute it. BISCUITS!!

Buttermilk Biscuits to be exact!

Perfect to dip into the nice thick soup. I am thinking that the Bacon Cheddar Chipotle Biscuits would also be good with this. Those biscuits are definitely influenced by her years in TEXAS!!

After Christmas I ended up with a couple of pieces of Pumpkin Pie. I knew I couldn’t just toss them, I didn’t need to eat them (so full!!!) and I didn’t want to freeze them. A conundrum! Solved by JUlie with her…

Pumpkin Pie Milkshake

which I will call a smoothing because somehow that sounds healthier. This is so easy and definitely competes with the pie shakes at Sonic. Think of the all the possibilities if you have ice cream and left over pie – any kind of pie.

1 piece of pumpkin pie, homemade or store-bought
1/2 cup whole milk
1/2 a pint of vanilla ice cream
Whipped cream, for serving

Combine all ingredients, except whipped cream, in your blender. Puree until smooth. Pour into glasses and garnish with a generous dollop of whipped cream and some of the pie crust crumbs left in the pie plate.

Makes 2 small smoothies or 1 large smoothie.
How dangerous is THAT!! And how simple.

Now, about those other recipes I have pinned. So much goodness, so little time.

It’s not called the Secret Recipe Club because we have to blog in secret – How 1984 would that be? – but because until the big reveal date our assignment is a secret. Then we can share what we have cooked form our ‘assignment’ and let the world know about all the deliciousness we found. If you want to join in you can find all the information you need by visiting the site. Way too much fun and kitchen adventures to be had.

You can check out all the fun we had this time by visiting below:

An InLinkz Link-up