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. 

Banana Zucchini Bread {Refined Sugar Free}

I've gone off refined sugar this summer, but was dying to do something with the abundance of summer squashes that have appeared in my garden this week. A little tinkering in the kitchen with a nice ripe banana and some natural sweeteners produced a batch of muffins that knocked my socks WAY off—it's light, moist, sweet, and utterly delicious. And guess what? It's healthy, too! It's tweaked from my favorite-ever zucchini bread recipe that I got from my Aunt Jeannie several years ago. It's also fairly flexible depending on what you have on hand, although Mahon and I both agreed that the (real) maple syrup in it is the true secret ingredient that makes it lick-the-plate good. In the future, I'd like to try subbing some applesauce for some of the sweetener or oil, but I didn't have any today.

3 eggs

1 cup oil

1 T vanilla

1/3 cup honey

1/3 cup real maple syrup (it doesn't have to be real, but if it's not, then it won't be free of white sugar...)

2 packed cups of zucchini

1 very ripe banana, thoroughly mashed

2 1/2 cups wheat flour

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1/4 t baking soda

2 t baking powder

1 t salt

Preheat oven to 350, and grease either two dozen muffin cups or 2 loaf pans (or one muffin pan and one loaf pan, or—you get it!). In a large bowl, stir eggs, oil, vanilla, honey, and syrup until well blended. Add zucchini and banana and combine. Gently add the flour so that it sits on top of the liquid ingredients and then sift cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into the flour before incorporating the dry ingredients into the wet ones. (See what I did there? You managed the whole wet-and-dry-ingredients thing in ONE BOWL!) Fold into prepared pans and bake for 19 minutes (muffins) or 40 minutes (loaves). Enjoy!

Buttermilk Drop Biscuits

3 cups flour (wheat works great!)

3 T baking powder

3/4 t baking soda

1 1/2 t salt 

8 T fat (butter, coconut oil, or a combination of the two)

1-1 1/2 cups plain kefir (my preference), buttermilk, soured milk, or 3/4 cup plain yogurt and 1/4-1/2 cup milk

Preheat oven to 450. Mix dry ingredients in large bowl. Cut in fat with pastry blender until dough is crumbly, with varying sizes of fat chunks (ie don't pulverize it - it only takes a little bit of cutting!). Add one cup of your liquid and use a fork to stir gently, just until liquid is incorporated and dough is moistened. If there's still a lot of dry flour at the bottom of the bowl, slowly add more liquid while stirring, until you have just enough to moisten it all. (It shouldn't be too sticky to touch.) How much liquid you use will depend on the weather, your altitude, whether there are fairies in your kitchen, the alignment of Jupiter, etc.

Take a spoon (or your hands) and drop rounded balls close together on your ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 14-15 minutes at 450.

Parmesan Drop Biscuits

Prep time: Easy

I've always really loved the crumble topping on this Chicken Pot Pie Crumble recipe, and recently I tweaked it just a little bit to make absolutely delicious savory drop biscuits. Now they're one of my favorite quick and easy snacks!

2 cups flour (I use, and highly recommend, whole wheat)

2 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pepper

6 tblsp chilled and sliced butter

3/4 cup fresh grated parmesan cheese

1 cup heavy cream OR 1/2-3/4 cup milk

Preheat oven to 400. Mix flour, baking powder, salt, and pepper together in a medium mixing bowl. Cut in butter with pastry blender or two knives until mixture is crumbly. Stir in parmesan cheese. Add cream or milk slowly while stirring until dough just holds together (depending on the elements and cooking voodoo of my kitchen at any given moment, I have used more or less cream/milk). Gently shape dough into balls with your hands (mine are usually a little smaller than my palm, but I have small hands!) and drop onto an ungreased pan (I prefer a pan lined with parchment paper for these). Cook for 18-20 minutes. Depending on the size of your biscuit balls, you'll end up with 9-12 drop biscuits. They're delicious for a day or two after cooking, but my favorite way to eat them is right out of the oven!

Pao de Queijo (Brazilian Cheese Rolls) (Gluten-Free)

Prep time: Very easy

Source: Adapted from Our Best Bites

Two or three years ago, I made this recipe as the original instructions indicated—using cheddar and parmesan cheese. Neither Mahon nor I were especially blown away by them, and I never made it again. Last summer, we went for the first time to Tucano's, a local restaurant chain that serves Brazilian churrascuro (grilled meats & veggies) and fell in love with their pao de queijo. In trying to figure out why we'd loved the Tucano's rolls so much more than the ones I'd made a few years before, I did a bunch of research and found that most of the recipes online call for only parmesan, rather than parmesan and cheddar. Although I was skeptical that parmesan could be the cheese in the Tucano's rolls, which are very mild-tasting, we decided to give it a try and adapted the recipe from Our Best Bites to use only parmesan. To our surprise and TOTAL delight, we had hit on exactly the right cheese! Our rolls were even better than the ones at Tucano's, since we ate them straight out of the oven and they were incredibly fresh and light. I'm embarrassed to say that between the two of us, we downed the whole batch in one night!

1 large egg

1/2 c milk

1/4 c canola oil

1 cup tapioca flour (also called tapioca starch)—don't substitute this! Every recipe I read agreed that the tapioca flour is what makes these rolls unique and authentic.

1/2 t kosher salt

1/2 cup grated (fresh) parmesan cheese
Any other desired spices for topping

Preheat oven to 400. Grease two mini muffin tins and set aside. In a blender, add all ingredients except cheese and blend until smooth. Add cheese and pulse 2-3 times. Immediately pour into your prepared muffin tins. (We found that filling them 1/2-2/3 of the way worked the best, though the batter is thin and tends to pour faster than you expect!) You can top with a sprinkle of extra cheese, a bit of kosher salt, or any other herb or spice you'd like! (Rosemary is also DELICIOUS.)

Bake 15-20 minutes or until the rolls have puffed up (they will puff quite a bit!) and are just barely golden on top. Ours took exactly 15 minutes. According to the original recipe, the yield varies depending on how full you fill your muffin cups; we ended up with about 20.

Serve immediately. These made a great companion to a meal of Black Bean Soup (also a Brazilian recipe originally from OBB!).

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!

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!

Pumpkin Bread

Rating: 5 stars (I am seriously considering getting rid of the whole rating system on this blog... I mean hello, haven't we figured out that ANYTHING I consider blog-worthy is at least 4.5???)

Prep time: Easy

Source: Various blogs, adapted by me

I discovered pumpkin chocolate-chip bread my first semester in college and immediately fell head-over-heels in love! I have used a recipe given to me by the neighbor who first introduced me to the stuff ever since, but I think that this recipe will be my new go-to recipe. It's moist, delicious, and is just as good the second day! I actually already dialed down the sugar from the original recipe, and I think I could subtract a bit more and it would still be delicious.

This recipe makes two tall medium loaves of bread (probably two flatter large loaves), or 24 muffins.

2 ½ cups white flour

1 cup whole wheat flour
(I usually change the flour ratios and do 2 cups wheat, 1 1/2 cup white)

2 cups sugar (I cut this down to as little as 1 1/3 cup)

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 teaspoon ginger

1 teaspoon salt

2 cups pumpkin puree (not pie filling)

1 cup canola or vegetable oil

4 large eggs

2/3 cup water

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (optional)

Preheat oven to 350. I like to line my loaf pans with foil or parchment paper because they tend to slightly carmelize the outside crust of quickbreads like this, and I don't like that... but that's completely optional. Grease pan (or muffin tin). In large bowl, mix together water, eggs, oil, and pumpkin until smooth. Gently add dry ingredients on top of the wet ones (I do flour first, then sugar, then baking soda and spices) and sift together with a fork, then combine with wet ingredients. (This is my easy one-bowl solution to the wet mix/dry mix problem!) Fold in chocolate chips and pour batter into prepared receptacles. Bake for 20-30 minutes (regular-sized muffins) or 60-70 minutes (loaves), until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. This bread is delicious warm, and equally delicious after it cools! It also freezes REALLY well - just let it cool completely and then wrap it first in plastic wrap and then in tinfoil. When you're ready to eat it, let it thaw for a few hours at room temperature. This recipe is a definite all-around winner!

Six (or five!)-seed Soda Bread

Rating: 5 stars for heartiness and great for soup!

Prep time: Easy

Source: 101 Cookbooks

This, paired with Panera soup, was my lunch today. It's definitely denser and heartier than a yeast-risen bread, but oh my goodness, was it good!!! It was absolutely divine paired with the broccoli cheese soup. I might never be able to serve the two dishes apart again! Not to mention, it was so EASY and so GORGEOUS!

2 1/2 tablespoons each sunflower, pumpkin, sesame, poppy, and flax seeds (I actually had all of these on hand)

1 t. fennel seeds (I didn't have these, so I just left them out—you really can customize this seed list to be whatever you prefer, or have on hand, though I thought the 5 I used were perfect)

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 3/4 cups spelt or wheat flour (for those of us who don't have spelt flour on hand!)

2 t. baking soda

1 t. salt

1 3/4 cup buttermilk, plus a little more for brushing (I didn't have buttermilk so I used a buttermilk substitute, 1 cup milk to 1 T lemon juice)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees (really, let it preheat all the way before you start making the dough—the dough makes up very fast and you want your oven to be all the way hot when it goes in). Place a rack in the center of the oven. Mix all seeds together in a bowl; set aside.

In larger bowl, combine flours, baking soda, and salt. Mix in all but 2 tablespoons of seeds. Create a well in the center of flour mixture and pour in 1 3/4 cup buttermilk (or substitute). Mix until just combined (but not too sticky), then turn onto a lightly-floured surface and knead about one minute (add a little flour at this point if necessary) or until mixture makes a nice bread dough. You don't want to knead too long, as the bread should go into the oven ASAP. Lightly flour a cookie sheet OR line with parchment paper. Shape dough into a round loaf and place on cookie sheet; with serrated knife, mark deep X in top of loaf. Brush with remaining buttermilk and sprinkle with remaining seeds. (Next time, I'd mix some egg yolk in with the buttermilk as some of the seeds fell off after baking—although I'm actually pleasantly surprised by how well the buttermilk did hold them on.) Bake for 35-40 minutes or until bread is a rich golden brown. Enjoy! Yields one loaf.

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 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.