Flaky Layered Biscuits

I love biscuits. Isn't that a requirement of being truly Southern? While I've never met a homemade biscuit I didn't want to devour, I've been working for years to perfect my biscuits and come up with THE best biscuit recipe I'd ever tasted. For a long time, our favorites were these Buttermilk Drop Biscuits—and while I totally love those, my one frustration was that they weren't very good for those days when I really wanted to cut a biscuit apart and slather it with strawberry jam. 

Enter these beauties. They are tall, tender, flaky, and layered, like biscuits from a fancy restaurant. And they are good. SO good. So good that the first time I made them I ate enough to give me a stomach ache. (I don't recommend that.) I suspect these biscuits will be the ones I'm making most often from now on! I did some experimenting in making these and threw the conventional biscuit wisdom (don't over-work the dough, etc.) out the window. I was nervous, but the picture speaks for itself! 

3 cups flour (I use half wheat, half white)

1 t baking powder

1 1/4 t salt

1 stick cold butter, grated

1 - 1 1/2 cups whipping cream or buttermilk (each gives a different texture—cream is more tender, buttermilk fluffier and more traditionally southern)

Mix together flour, salt, and baking powder. Grate in butter and mix with fork. Add one cup of cream and then continue adding until dough is moistened enough to hold together, but not wet. Turn onto floured countertop and knead once or twice to help dough hold together. Roll out with floured rolling pin, then fold into quarters and roll again. Repeat folding and rolling five or six times, until the dough is elastic and smooth, then roll to ~1 inch thickness. Cut biscuit rounds from dough and place onto a pan very close together, so that their edges touch (this makes them rise higher). Really cram them as closely together as you can! Bake 14-15 minutes or until golden-brown on top.

Yields about 1 dozen.

Flaky Layered Biscuits

I love biscuits. Isn't that a requirement of being truly Southern? While I've never met a homemade biscuit I didn't want to devour, I've been working for years to perfect my biscuits and come up with THE best biscuit recipe I'd ever tasted. For a long time, our favorites were these Buttermilk Drop Biscuits—and while I totally love those, my one frustration was that they weren't very good for those days when I really wanted to cut a biscuit apart and slather it with strawberry jam. 

Enter these beauties. They are tall, tender, flaky, and layered, like biscuits from a fancy restaurant. And they are good. SO good. So good that the first time I made them I ate enough to give me a stomach ache. (I don't recommend that.) I suspect these biscuits will be the ones I'm making most often from now on! I did some experimenting in making these and threw the conventional biscuit wisdom (don't over-work the dough, etc.) out the window. I was nervous, but the picture speaks for itself! 

3 cups flour (I use half wheat, half white)

1 Tbsp baking powder

1 1/4 t salt

1 stick butter, grated

1 - 1 1/2 cups whipping cream (regular, not heavy)

Preheat oven to 450. Mix together flour, salt, and baking powder. Grate in butter and mix with fork. Add one cup of cream and then continue adding until dough is moistened enough to hold together, but not wet. Turn onto floured countertop and knead once or twice to help dough hold together. Roll out with floured rolling pin, then fold into quarters and roll again. Repeat folding and rolling five or six times, until the dough is elastic and smooth, then roll to 1/2 inch thickness (yep, it's thicker than you usually would roll a biscuit—it's part of what makes these extra-good!). Cut biscuit rounds from dough and place onto a pan very close together, so that their edges touch (this makes them rise higher). Really cram them as closely together as you can! Bake 14-15 minutes or until golden-brown on top.

Yields about 1 dozen.

Healthy PB Chocolate Muffins

Lately these have been my go-to breakfast: I bake a bunch at once, freeze most of them, and every morning I pull out two and microwave them for thirty seconds. That, plus whatever fruit I have in the house, makes a really satisfying and filling breakfast that keeps me full until lunchtime - which is saying something where my metabolism is concerned! I actually put this recipe through a nutrition calculator and was excited to see that each muffin has 8 grams of protein. (That's more than an egg!) I'll include the full nutrition info at the bottom.

2 eggs
1/4 c canola oil
1/2 c honey
1/2 c kefir (or buttermilk, 1/2 milk and 1/2 yogurt, or milk soured with a little lemon juice)
1/2 c PB
1.5 c whole wheat flour
3/4 c oats
1 T baking powder
3/4 t salt
1/3 c cocoa

Preheat oven to 350 and grease a full-sized muffin tin. Add eggs, oil, honey, kefir, and peanut butter to a medium-sized bowl and mix thoroughly. Carefully scoop flour and oats onto the top of the wet ingredients without stirring them in. Add baking powder, salt, and cocoa, and use a fork or a whisk to sift them into the flour mixture before stirring the dry ingredients through the wet. Fill muffin cups and bake for 18 minutes. 

Berry Chocolate Coffee Cake

Prep time: Medium

Source: Mostly from my own head; the cake base is adapted from a few other recipes

Yesterday morning I decided that we needed a Valentine's-appropriate dessert to follow our dinner of heart-shaped pupusas. Because I've really been in the mood for a rich, delicious coffee cake this week, that's what came into my mind! What could be more perfect for Valentine's than a coffee cake laced with just-barely-sweetened berries and studded with dark chocolate? After tasting our creation last night, Mahon and I decided: Pretty much nothing! This is definitely a recipe we'll be keeping and making again.

For Berry Ribbon:

1 cup frozen mixed berries

1/2 T honey

For Cake:

1/2 cup butter, room temperature

3/4 cup sugar

2 large eggs

2 cups flour

1 t baking powder

1 t baking soda

3/4 t salt

1 cup plain Greek yogurt or sour cream

1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

For Streusel Topping:

1/4 cup butter (cold and sliced, or room temperature)

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup flour

2 t cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour an 8" or 9" pan (I used a round springform pan). In small saucepan on stove, heat berries and honey together and simmer for a few minutes, or until they have made a syrup. If desired, roughly blend berry syrup using an immersion blender or regular blender (our mix had large whole strawberries, so this kept the chunks to a manageable size!). Set syrup aside.

To prepare the streusel topping, combine all ingredients in small bowl and cut together with a fork or pastry blender until crumbly. Set aside.

In small bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. In large mixing bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer with beater attachment, cream butter and sugar together until smooth. Beat in eggs one at a time. Add the flour mixture alternately with the yogurt/sour cream and blend batter until smooth. Fold in chocolate chips.

Fold half of the cake batter into your prepared pan. Pour berry syrup evenly over batter. Add remaining batter on top of syrup; using a rubber spatula, swirl the batter and syrup together to create a berry ribbon. Top with streusel topping and bake 45-55 minutes, or until edges are beginning to brown and a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool at least a few minutes before eating—the cake is much easier to cut when it's completely cooled, but if you're like us, you won't be able to wait that long!

Whole Wheat Waffles

Prep Time: Easy-medium (typical for waffles)

Source: Adapted from the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook

This has been our go-to recipe for waffles ever since we got married. Made with white flour and sugar, as the original recipe calls for, it produces light, deliciously buttery waffles that crisp up just enough on the outside. After we got a wheat grinder this last Christmas, however, we used some of our freshly ground white wheat flour to make them, and oh my goodness, are they good! We made them probably 4 times in the days after Christmas, and have made them several times since. For classic white waffles, replace the wheat flour with white flour and the honey with white sugar.

1 3/4 cups white wheat flour

1 T baking powder

1/4 t salt

2 eggs

2 T honey

1 3/4 cups milk

1/2 cup canola oil or melted butter

1 t vanilla

Preheat waffle iron. In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together eggs, honey, milk, oil, and vanilla. Gently scoop flour into bowl so that it sort of sits on top of the wet ingredients, and then add baking powder and salt on top of flour. Use your whisk or fork to gently sift the baking powder and salt into the flour a little, and then combine all ingredients together and mix until smooth. 

For our waffle iron, we've found that using about exactly 1/3 cup of this batter is absolutely perfect, but yours might be different! Cook according to the directions on your waffle iron. Serve hot with butter and syrup. Waffles typically come out of the iron a little soft and crisp up in the first minute or two on the plate.

Classic Pancakes

Prep time: Easy-medium

Source: Ray family recipe (I believe it's originally from the Betty Crocker cookbook)

This is another recipe I was shocked to not find on my blog! This is the classic pancake recipe I grew up loving, and it will always be one of my absolute favorites. The original recipe yield is only about 5-6 pancakes, so we typically will double it, depending on how many we're planning to feed.

1 egg

1 cup flour*

1 T baking powder

1 T sugar

1/2 t salt

1 cup milk

Preheat griddle or skillet to about 350. In medium-sized bowl, beat egg until fluffy. Gently scoop flour into the bowl and add all other dry ingredients on top of them. Use your whisk or fork to gently sift the dry ingredients together a little bit (so that the baking powder is integrated into the flour and isn't clumpy). Add milk and mix all ingredients together until just combined. Cook each pancake 2-3 minutes per side, depending on your preferred level of doneness. Serve with maple syrup or fruit and fresh whipped cream. (For a delicious variation on these pancakes we like to make in the fall, try these!)

*Oddly enough, this is the one recipe in the world where I personally prefer white flour to wheat—it's something about the flavor and texture of the pancakes. However, they're also delicious with wheat flour.

Cindy's Imitation Maple Syrup

Prep time: Very easy, but be sure to start it before you start your pancakes/waffles/whatever you're putting the syrup on so that it has a little time to simmer.

Source: Adapted from a classic Ray family recipe!

I have always been a syrup snob. Ever since I was a little girl, I have REALLY hated regular imitation maple syrup. It's nasty stuff! I grew up with my dad's homemade syrup and it will always be my favorite. Lately I've been playing with the recipe a little to see if I could cut down on the sugar a bit, and have ended up loving my end result even better than the original recipe! It's by no means a health food, since it's still highly concentrated sugar, but hey—it's at least a little better. The dash of salt gives it a rich and complex flavor, too.

1 1/2 cups white or brown sugar (brown has a stronger flavor)

1 T cornstarch

A dash of salt (about 1/8 tsp)

1 cup water

1/2 t imitation maple flavoring

1/2 t vanilla flavoring

In a small saucepan, thoroughly mix sugar, salt, and cornstarch together. Add water and bring to a boil on the stove. Once the syrup is boiling, reduce heat to medium-low and allow to simmer until you're done making your pancakes (or whatever you're going to put the syrup on!)—about 10-20 minutes. Just before serving, remove from heat and add flavor extracts. Stores great in fridge (and also gets thicker as it cools).

Crepes

Prep time: Medium

Source: Our Best Bites

I've really neglected this blog for the last year. Because there are a LOT of recipes we use and love that haven't made it up here, I'm resolving over the next little while to get this blog back up to date! I'm also going to try to be less of a slacker about taking pictures of stuff before we gobble it all up. We'll see how that goes!

We started using this crepe recipe a year or two ago and it is, hands-down, one of our favorite recipes. Our #1 favorite way to prepare them is layering several crepes together sandwiched with butter and maple syrup... it's to die for! We also love them with fruit and cream cheese or Greek yogurt, berry syrup, homemade whipped cream, and stewed apples (or any combination of the above—drizzling a little maple syrup over stewed apples with whipped cream is pretty divine!).

2 eggs

2 T canola oil

3 T sugar (or, if using wheat flour, honey; leave this out if you're making savory crepes)

1 C flour (it's equally great with white or whole-wheat)

About 1/8 tsp salt

About 1 1/3 cups milk

Combine eggs, oil, sugar/honey, and salt in blender and pulse to combine. Leave the blender running on low and alternate adding milk and flour. (If you're using a top-motor blender, like we now are, you'll have to add everything together and then open it up again to scrape the flour off the sides.) If any flour clings to the sides, scrape it down with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon. Like many recipes, the exact ratio of flour to milk can be a little fickle and depend on the weather/your ingredients/what your astrological sign happens to be doing at the moment. You're looking for a batter that is quite runny and easily pourable (not at all like pancake batter).

Pre-heat a nonstick skillet over medium heat on the stove and grease with butter (be sure to get part of the sides, as the crepes will often creep up the sides as they cook!). When pan is warm (you want the butter to sizzle, but not immediately turn brown), pour a small amount of batter into the pan. We use small omelet-sized pans to make ours, and pour only a silver-dollar sized amount of batter or less into the pan. (Experiment a little til you find the right amount!) Quickly use your wrist to swirl the batter in the pan until it has evenly and thinly coated the bottom (and bottom of the sides) of your pan. Cook until the crepe starts to brown around the edges and most of the center is no longer liquid (usually 30-60 seconds).

Although we've gotten pretty good at making crepes and can make them quickly and beautifully now, neither of us has ever been able to master either flipping them with the pan (HA) or using only one utensil to flip them. Instead, we take a heat-safe rubber spatula (the kind you use to get the last of the cake batter from your bowl) and gently work it around the edges of the crepe as soon as they begin to brown. Then, even more gently (thin crepes are pretty fragile—but totally worth it!), we take a regular flipping spatula and use that to flip the crepe to its other side.

Cook about 15-30 seconds on the second side and then gently flip finished crepe off onto a plate. Voila! You're now a master French chef! (Or something like that.)

Blueberry Struesel Muffins (AKA, Best Blueberry Muffins Ever!)

Prep time: Medium (for muffins—still not that hard)

Source: Adapted from OurBestBites.com

Words cannot describe how amazing these muffins are! Everyone I have made them for has begged for the recipe. They are seriously delicious! I also have found that you can replace at least 3/4 cup of the white flour with wheat flour without changing the flavor or texture much. Since I don't usually have buttermilk on hand, I substitute it. My favorite combination has been using half regular milk and half plain yogurt—this combo makes the muffins SO incredibly tender and fluffy! I've also used soured milk (just under 3/4 cups milk with about a teaspoon of vinegar, allowed to stand for about 5 minutes) and that worked just fine. Also, I've adapted the original recipe so that it only uses 2 bowls instead of 1.

1 large egg

3/4 c. buttermilk

1/3 c. canola oil

1 3/4 c. all-purpose flour

1/2 c. sugar

2 3/4 tsp. baking powder

3/4 tsp. table salt

2 tsp. grated orange or lemon peel (optional—I'm sure it's amazing but I usually don't have it, so I leave it out; sometimes I add a splash of lemon juice instead)

1 c. fresh or frozen blueberries

1 Tbsp. flour

1 Tbsp. sugar

Streusel Topping

1/4 c. sugar

2 1/2 Tbsp. flour

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1 1/2 Tbsp. softened (not melted) butter

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spray muffin tin with nonstick cooking spray. In medium mixing bowl, combine egg, buttermilk, and oil and beat with a fork or whisk until thoroughly combined. Gently scoop flour, sugar, baking powder, zest, and salt into the bowl so that they lie on top of the wet ingredients. With your fork, gently whisk dry ingredients together; when they are somewhat combined, go ahead and mix everything (wet and dry) in the bowl together until just combined. In smaller bowl, mix 1 T each flour and sugar. Add in blueberries and stir together until blueberries are coated with flour mixture. (This helps keep your blueberries from turning the whole batter purple!) Fold blueberries into batter. Spoon batter into prepared muffin tin.

 In the same bowl that the blueberries were just in, add sugar, flour, and cinnamon for streusel topping. Cut in softened butter with a fork until topping is moist but crumbly. Sprinkle streusel over muffins (about 1/2-1 t. each). Bake at 400 for 18 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean. Allow to cool on a cooling rack still in the pan for about 5 minutes, then transfer to the cooling rack by itself. (If you can resist eating one immediately out of the oven!) Enjoy!

Wheat Blender Pancakes

Rating: 5 stars

Prep time: Easy

1 cup milk

1 cup wheat kernels

1 1/2 t salt

2 T oil

2 T honey

2 eggs

2 t baking powder

Preheat griddle or pan. In blender, combine milk and wheat kernels and blend on high for 3-5 minutes. Add in other ingredients and blend for another minute or two, this time on low. Pour onto griddle and cook (you want to flip your pancakes when the bubbles get big and the first few start to pop). The end! These are delicious and have a great texture—and they're healthy too!

Applesauce Oatmeal Muffins (Sugar-free)

Rating: 5 stars
Prep time: Very easy

I use no-sugar-added applesauce and whole wheat flour in these delicious muffins. The natural sugar and the high fiber content make this my current favorite snack - they seem to have almost no impact on my blood sugar. Awesome!

1/2 c. white flour*
1/2 c. wheat flour
1/2 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. nutmeg
1/2 t. salt
3/4 c. rolled oats
3 t. baking powder

1/2 t. baking soda
1 egg
1/3 c. milk
Just under 1/4 c. oil

1/4 c. honey
2/3 c. applesauce

Preheat oven to 350, spray pans with cooking spray. In medium-sized bowl beat egg, then add oil, honey, and milk; stir in applesauce. Add dry ingredients; stir until just barely combined.

Bake for 15-20 min. Yield: one dozen muffins.

*I tried these with a whole cup of wheat flour, but they ended up just too dry, so I usually do half-and-half.

Apple Pancakes

Rating: 5 stars
Prep Time: Medium

1 egg
1 c. flour
1 c. milk
1 T. sugar
2 T. oil
3 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. nutmeg
1 medium apple, chopped finely

For topping:
Whipped cream OR next 3 ingredients
Approximately 1/3 cup whipping cream
2 T. sugar
1 t. vanilla

3-4 apples, sliced thinly
1 T. sugar
1 T. cinnamon
1 T. butter

In medium frying pan, heat butter (over medium heat). Put topping apples in pan; sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Stir and cover; let this cook on medium heat for 5-10 minutes and then switch to low heat until you are ready to use them. For whipped cream: combine all ingredients and mix on high until cream is fluffy.

For pancakes: Beat egg until fluffy. Add all other ingredients except chopped apple; stir until just mixed (don't overstir). Fold in apples, mix and fry on griddle or pan around 350ºF (surface will need to be greased if it's not already seasoned).

Top cooked pancakes with whipped cream and apples and enjoy!

This recipe is made possible by my brother Jared, who gave us an awesome griddle for our wedding present.

Apple Harvest Coffee Cake

Rating: 5 stars
Prep Time: Easy

Recipe adapted from Johnny Appleseed Coffee Cake, found here.

This recipe calls for Bisquick, which I don't have . . . so I looked up a recipe for homemade Bisquick mix and improvised. This proportion makes almost exactly the amount called for in the recipe. It can also be quadrupled to make a lot, and frozen for later use. (I probably would have done that, except that we're running dangerously low on flour!)

2 cups flour
2 T baking powder
3/4 t salt
2 T sugar
1/4 c shortening

Mix first 4 ingredients together; cut in shortening until mixture is crumbly. In separate bowl, mix:

2 cups Bisquick (or all but 2 T of mix listed above)
2 T sugar
1 t cinnamon
1/4 t nutmeg
1 egg
1 cup milk (I think I did more than this - it was awfully thick)
1 cup peeled, finely chopped apple

Combine all ingredients but apple, beat vigorously 1/2 minute. Fold in apple; pour batter into greased 8 or 9-inch pan.

Topping:
2 T bisquick
1/4 cup sugar
1 T cinnamon
2 T cold butter, sliced

Combine first 3 ingredients. Cut in butter until mixture is crumbly. Sprinkle over coffee cake; bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes.