Buttermilk Drop Biscuits

I am pretty good at baking a lot of things, but biscuits from scratch is not one of them!  I watched a good tutorial recently about making cut out biscuits, which was very enlightening, but I was still afraid to try it.  Then I came across a wonderful drop biscuit recipe from Outlander Kitchen and thought, it seems so simple... I could probably do this.

I followed her recipe exactly, using 2 cups all-purpose flour instead of 1 cup all-purpose and 1 cup cake flour.  I also clabbered whole milk with lemon juice instead of using buttermilk.  This is also the first time I put my cast iron griddle pan in the oven and probably the first time I've ever baked anything at 475 degrees F.

Note that my pan has ridges in it -- but it made no difference.  The biscuits baked PERFECTLY and did not stick one bit.

After baking -- minus one because Eric had to taste-test right out of the oven.  He was bowled over! Perfect, tender, buttery, restaurant-quality biscuits.  It was a great side for a beef stew I made in the crock pot.

Mrs. Bug's Buttermilk Drop Biscuits from "The Fiery Cross" via Outlander Kitchen

Brioche Bread

If you're up for a bread challenge, this is the one that will be worth the effort and knock your socks off.  My kids LOVE this bread.  It's enriched with eggs and butter and bakes to a heavenly yellow color inside.  So tender, so buttery, so wonderful.

Notice that some bakers use ingredient weights instead of cup measurements.  Weight is much more accurate when it comes to baking.  Invest in a small digital kitchen scale and you will be baking like a semi-pro!  Otherwise, there are conversion tables you can google for measurements and oven temperatures.

Brioche loaf via Simply Delicious

English Muffin Bread

Recently I realized how great home-baked bread really is.  It smells great, it's great warm from the oven, and it's fun to make.  At some point I will be buying the Breville BBM800XL Custom Loaf Bread Maker because I have three other Breville appliances in my kitchen that I love.  At the moment I can make great loaves with my KitchenAid stand mixer (now going on 13 years old) using the dough hook, or with just a bowl and wooden spoon.

Bread is new territory for me.  The multi-step process seemed intimidating.  Rising dough and warm spots in the kitchen and refrigerating overnight and hollow noises -- I mean really, just too many steps that I didn't fully understand.  But I have become a more confident baker, and King Arthur Flour has a lot to do with that.  Two main ingredients have really taken my baking to the next level --King Arthur flours and Kerrygold butter.  Once my recipes started TASTING so amazing, I started paying more attention to technique and nuances to make things I'm really proud of.

I started with boxed bread mixes from King Arthur.  I had good results with those, so now I'm trying recipes from scratch.  First I tried brioche, then a country white loaf, and tonight I'm making English muffin bread.  Brioche was pretty challenging, so I think this bread I'm making tonight will be much easier.  This recipe makes two loaves in smaller pans (8X4).

5 cups all-purpose flour
4 1/2 tsp dry active yeast
1 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 cups warm milk
1/2 cup warm water
cornmeal

In my KitchenAid mixer I added the yeast, sugar, salt, milk, and water.  I gently stirred in half the flour.  Let this sit for 5 minutes for the yeast to activate.  The activation happens from the warm liquids and the yeast eating up the sugar.  You will see bubbles forming in the dough.  This is perfect.  If you aren't seeing bubbles, you may need to set your bowl in a warm place in the kitchen to encourage the reaction.  When the top is completely covered in bubbles, add the remaining flour in 2-3 additions.  This will be easier if you use a wooden spoon at this point, as the dough gets quite sticky and thick.  Using the mixer will probably OVER-mix the dough, which will make tough bread.  Stir gently to incorporate all the flour.

Grease the bread pans on all sides with whatever spray or oil you like.  I use organic vegetable shortening.  Once they are greased, sprinkle cornmeal generously all over the sides to coat the pan.  Your oil or butter will help it adhere.  Tap out the excess.  Divide the dough in half and roughly shape a loaf that fills the pan from end to end.  It will be a bit sticky, but it's okay.  It may even look a bit ugly, but it's still going to be okay.  First we work on taste and then we work on presentation.  Do the same with the second loaf.

Cover the loaves and put them in a warm spot to rise.  I preheat the oven to 400 degrees F at this point and put the loaves on top of the oven covered with a clean dish towel.  The heat from the oven helps the loaves rise.  The loaves are ready to bake when the volume has doubled in the pan or the dough rises higher than the top of the pan (30 minutes to 1 hour).  Just before you are ready to put them in the oven, sprinkle more cornmeal on top.

Bake at 400 for 30 minutes.  The bread will brown nicely and has a nice hollow noise when you tap it.  Cool the loaves completely on a wire rack.  I actually put on oven mitts and removed the loaves from their pans to cool.

Cut loaves with a long serrated knife.  This type of bread will be great with butter and jelly, or my daughter's favorite of peanut butter and honey.  Mmm, nooks and crannies...

*Evening edit:  We couldn't wait to taste it, so we all had a warm slice.  My daughter and I had ours with butter and Bonne Maman strawberry preserves, and Eric smeared his slice with Stonewall Kitchen's fig and walnut butter.  We are impressed.

Lemony Sugar Cut-out Cookies

Easter is just around the corner, and we haven't properly celebrated any holidays since Christmas.  It's time we made some festive cut-out cookies here.

I really like the lemon flavor in Panera's sugar cookies, so I added a lot of lemon to this recipe.  The lemon could be left out or substituted with something else like almond extract.  I also try to use fresh, organic, or non-GMO ingredients when possible.

1 cup (2 sticks) room temperature butter (Kerrygold is my go-to)
2/3 cup sugar
1 room temperature egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp lemon extract
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 cups flour (King Arthur All-Purpose is a great choice)
Cookie cutters

Cream the butter and sugar together in a stand mixer.  When it's pale and fluffy, beat in the egg, vanilla extract, lemon extract, and salt.  When that is well combined, mix in 1/2 cup flour at a time, waiting to add more until the flour is thoroughly incorporated.  You should have lovely soft dough that smells buttery and lemony, and pulls together away from the sides of the bowl.  If it doesn't come together from the sides of the bowl, you may need just a bit more flour.  Take your beautiful dough and refrigerate it covered for at least 4 hours or overnight.  You need firm, chilled dough to roll out for cutout cookies.

When you are ready to roll out the dough, gently flour your surface and rolling pin.  I am lucky to have granite countertops, which are good for rolling dough and keeping it chilled.  I also sometimes use a plastic pastry mat for easy clean up.  Turn your dough a quarter turn every couple rolls to keep the size even.  Lightly flour the surface of the dough if your rolling pin is too sticky.  Roll to a thickness of about 1/4 inch.  For best results with your cookie cutter, pile flour in a shallow dish and dip your cutter between every cut.  Cut your cookies straight down with just a little wiggle to release the shape.  I have a handy Wilton cake lifter that is good for scraping up large cutout cookies to transfer to a baking sheet, but a flat metal spatula would work well, too.  I also like to bake cookies on a Silpat or parchment paper.  Silpats are great for nice, even, non-stick baking.  It's one of those things that once you use it, you don't know what you did before you had it.

Bake cookies at 350 degrees F for 8-10 minutes.  The cookies should be just barely colored from baking when they are done.  If they get too golden, when they cool they will be too hard.  Wait a minute or two after they come out of the oven to transfer to a wire rack to fully cool.  Patience pays off here because intricate cut-out shapes will break if you move them too soon.

Frost your cookies only when they are FULLY cooled.  Warm cookies just melt icing -- it's a total mess.  Any icing will work here.  Colorful icing, sprinkles, colored sugars, the works!

Here's a smooth icing you can whip up quickly:

3/4 cup sifted powdered sugar (lumps are the devil)
1 tablespoon milk
1 tablespoon melted butter
1/2 tsp vanilla
Optional: food coloring

Shepherd's or Cottage Pie

One of the best things my mom made while we were growing up was mince and totties (which should actually maybe have been called tatties), which was about the same thing as shepherd's pie.  True shepherd's pie is made with lamb, so the appropriate name for beef or chicken would be "cottage pie".  I have read different versions of this with varying spices and other additions, and have come up with my own version.  I like my cottage pie with beef and will test a chicken or turkey version soon.

Also, my husband really wanted this in a pie form with crusts like a chicken pot pie.  We tried this and I think with the potatoes, it's just too much.  The meat mixture alone in a pie crust would probably be great, either in a pie dish or as empanada-style hand pies.

Mashed potatoes:

4-5 small to medium Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and chopped

1/2 stick (4 Tbsp) of salted butter (Kerrygold is my favorite)

1/4-1/3 cup milk

Additional salt to taste

Meat mixture:

canola oil

1/2 medium sweet onion, diced

1 cup carrots, chopped into small pieces.  You could use shredded or crinkle cut carrots and chop those.

1 tsp minced garlic (I like the kind in a jar)

1 tsp salt (I like sea salt or pink Himalayan)

1/2 black pepper (from a grinder for optimal freshness)

1 pound ground beef  (could also try substituting ground lamb, ground turkey, or diced chicken breasts)

2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

2 tsp Dijon mustard (yellow mustard works in a pinch)

1/3 cup beef or chicken broth (my mom would have used Oxo cubes and water)

up to 3 Tbsp flour

1/2 cup peas

Additionally:  cheese, preferably cheddar, either pre-shredded from a bag or chunks cut off a block.  The amount depends on how much you like cheese.

First, boil salted water in a large pot for the potato pieces.  Potatoes are done when a fork passes through the cooked chunks easily.  Drain away the water and mash the potatoes with butter, milk, and salt.  You may need more or less milk at this point.  If you like thinner potatoes that spread on top of the dish easily, maybe add a little more.  If you like them thick, hold back the milk til you've seen what the butter has done.  Alternatively, you can whip these in a stand mixer.  Taste the mixed product before adding extra salt.

For the beef mixture, heat a tablespoon of canola oil over medium heat in a pan.  When it's heated a bit, add the diced onions and carrots.  Sautee these until the onions turn translucent and the carrots soften.  Add the garlic, salt, and pepper.  When these are evenly distributed, add the beef.  Brown the meat, chopping it in to smaller pieces with your spoon or spatula.  Incorporate the veggies and let the flavors mingle.  When the meat is fully browned, you can now add the Worcestershire sauce, Dijon mustard, and broth.  Mix these in evenly to the meat and veggies, still cooking over medium heat.  Now you can add a bit of flour to thicken the mixture and make it into a"gravy".  Add a tablespoon at a time and mix it in well -- flour can clump in liquids.  Also, check thickness after each tablespoon --avoid OVER-thickening the broth.  You may only need one or two tablespoons of flour.  If it gets too thick, you can add more broth or water.  When it looks satisfactory, turn off the heat at this point and mix in the peas -- I just toss in frozen ones.

Heat your oven to 350 degrees F.  Assemble the dish in two layers in a glass baking dish, 8X8 or 9X9.  You can add cheese to this in a couple ways: between the beef and potato layers, on top of the potato layer, or in fun chunks pressed through the layers.  I have tried all of these and I liked stuffing chunks of sharp white cheddar in the baking dish after I layered in the meat and potatoes.  It's like a glorious treasure hunt of cheesy surprises when you go to eat it.  But it is easier to use a bag of shredded cheese, so do what feels right to you.  So, with your cheese plan in place, layer the meat mixture in the bottom of the dish, and then cheese and potatoes in the order that you wish. Bake uncovered for about 20-25 minutes, til the meat and gravy is bubbly and the cheese appears melted.  

Kilt and a stout brew are also optional, but would probably round out the experience.  Ith gu leòir!

My Morning Coffee

Eric and I have a favorite brand of coffee -- Baltimore Coffee and Tea.  There are a couple locations near us that sell the whole, roasted beans, but we also like to visit one of their shops in Timonium.  This location is also their roasting plant and it smells amazing in there!  Coffee bean freshness has everything to do with when the beans were roasted.  So we enjoy incredibly good espresso every morning because we are buying freshly roasted whole beans from a nearby location and grinding them as needed.  We have also tried ordering their coffee online and it arrived the next day.  Great company, great product.

We get the organic espresso blend of beans.  That goes in to the Breville BES870XL Barista Express Espresso Machine with Grinder, and out comes amazing espresso with golden crema.  The Breville espresso machine is not the kind of appliance that anyone can just open and use.  There is a learning curve that goes with it.  Barista skills would be helpful here.  I myself had no barista skills when I first used this machine, so we did make a lot of bad cups of coffee in the beginning.  Eventually we found the right grind size and amount for our freshly roasted beans, so now we almost never have to adjust those settings.  When it comes to packing the ground coffee into the portafilter, there is a science to how hard you do or don't tamp the grounds, and all of these things determine how well your espresso shots will turn out.  Eric mastered this process first, because he seriously enjoys overcoming challenges.  Now we can both make beautiful double shots of espresso.

Eric has been weaning himself off sugar, so he drinks his coffee with just a touch of sugar and sometimes without milk.  I drink coffee with less sugar in it than a Starbucks drink, but I still like it light and sweet.  Lately I have been liking a particular latte recipe:

double shot of organic espresso
2 teaspoons organic cane sugar
1/2 tablespoon of unsalted Kerrygold butter
1/2 teaspoon of blackstrap molasses
1/2 teaspoon of bourbon vanilla extract
8 oz of steamed and foamed organic whole milk

I think I stumbled on the butter idea about two weeks ago when I heard about Starbucks having a butterscotch latte.  What is butterscotch?  Butter, brown sugar, salt, and cream.  What is brown sugar?  Sugar and molasses.  So instead of going through the work to make butterscotch, I just added the same ingredients to my latte.  Everything goes into the bottom of the coffee cup, then the espresso is brewed on top.  Steamed milk is stirred in.  I am no fancy foamed milk artist, so I just top the whole thing with way too much foam.  It's just fun to drink all the foam -- kind of like how my four year old likes to blow bubbles in her milk.  

So this has become the morning ritual, no matter how I flavor it.  After drinking this at home, I don't care for the taste of any other coffee anymore, especially the gross Starbucks lattes.  They don't taste fresh anymore, are usually pretty weak, and have a chemical aftertaste.  YUCK.  Much better and cheaper to make it yourself at home, with all the pride and satisfaction that comes with creating something delicious and just how you like it.