Black Pepper and Herb Biscuits

Why did I feel like making biscuits? Well I've never made them before so I thought I'd give it a shot. I ran out of buttermilk so I used a combo of 2% milk and heavy cream and I added fresh rosemary, chives, and thyme from my garden. Because I didn't use the right milk my biscuits were a little runny and after I formed them they baked together as one big cake biscuit, I just cut them apart once they cooled.

This recipe comes from Ode To Goodness. The directions are really easy to understand and are basically the same way you make scones.

Ingredients:

8 tablespoons (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/4 inch cubes

3 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon ground pepper
handful of fresh herbs

1 1/2 cups cold buttermilk

Method:

With a rack in the middle of the oven, heat to 500 degrees. Spray a 9 inch cake pan with non-stick spray. Set aside. Also, grab a 1/4 cup measure and spray it inside and out with non-stick spray, you’ll use it to portion out the biscuits and that will help the dough to slip out easily.
Spread one cup of flour onto a rimmed baking sheet to toss the biscuits in later. Set aside.
Mix the remaining two cups of flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, pepper, and herbs in a bowl to combine. Add the butter and cut it in with 2 forks until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add the buttermilk and mix lightly with a rubber spatula until the mixture is just combined. Do not over mix. It should be a little lumpy.
Working quickly, measure out a leveled 1/4 cup of the dough in your greased measuring cup. Drop the biscuits onto the floured rim baking sheet. Continue until you have no more dough. Sprinkle some flour from the baking sheet on top of each biscuit. Roll the biscuit in the flour, pick it up and form into a ball by passing it from each had to the other, kind of like your playing hot potato (remember that game?). By doing so, you’ll shape it and get rid of excess flour. Place the dough into the cake pan, arranging 9 biscuits around the perimeter and then filling in the middle with the last three.
Bake the biscuits for 5 minutes, then reduce the oven temperature to 450 and bake for another 15 minutes, or until nice and golden brown. Cool the biscuits in the pan for two minutes then flip them out onto a clean kitchen towel, then flip them right side up. Break them apart and let cool for 5 more minutes.

Whole Wheat Orange Olive Oil Rosemary Muffins

From a random fruity cake recipe- that looked delicious- I was inspired to make this muffin. I was just going to bake the cake in muffin tins, with peaches or something, but muffins with fruit in them don't hold up more than a couple of days in the fridge. They start to get soft and mushy from the water in the fruit.

The inspiration came from The Eccentric Cook's apricot breakfast cake. Interestingly enough, I just read an article in Lucky Peach Magazine about how terrible the commercially grown apricots that are available to us taste compared to the ones they have in Europe and Asia. Ours look really pretty but are completely tasteless. So I got rid of the fruit all together, backed off on the sugar, used half whole wheat flour, olive oil instead of butter, OJ and milk instead of just milk, and threw in some rosemary from my garden to compliment the orange. Also, I have perfected the baking temp to get the ultimate crusty muffin.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup olive oil
1 cup OJ
1/2 cup milk
zest from 2 oranges
zest and juice from 1 lemon
big handful of brown sugar
5 egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla

2 cups ap flour
1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
4 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons salt

big handful of fresh rosemary, chopped

Method:

Preheat oven to 450, grease 12 cup muffin pan.
Mix all wet ingredients in one bowl and all dry in another bowl.
Add dry to wet and stir til almost combined.
Add rosemary and mix the rest of the way.
Pour batter into muffin pan and bake on 450 for 7 minutes.
Turn oven down to 375 and bake about 8 more minutes, until muffins are done in the middle- check with a knife.

Muffin Saturday: Honey Orange Cornmeal Muffins

This recipe is adapted from Eat Good 4 Life's Cornmeal Cake Recipe. So I guess muffin Thursday turned out to be muffin Saturday (right before I had to go into work). I made the chocolate chunk cookies first and had an hour of time to kill so I busted these out. I usually like to put whole corn kernels in my corn muffins but I didn't have any cans lying around today. In the summer I like to use leftover fresh corn from the farm-stand.

I didn't have any honey so I used maple syrup instead, also I didn't have orange extract so I just left it out. My batter was reallllllly wet so I actually ended up putting in around 3/4 C of oats to soak up some of the liquid. I also added about 2 Tsp of crushed dried rosemary just for fun. And I changed the baking temp from 375 to 400 because muffins like it hot.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup olive oil (canola or vegetable oil will also work)
2 eggs
1/2 cup honey
1/8 cup sugar, plus 2-3 tablespoons to sprinkle the top of the cake
1/2 cup orange juice, plus 2-3 tablespoons
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
3/4 cup yellow cornmeal
2 teaspoons baking powder
Zest 1 orange
2 teaspoons orange extract (optional)

Preheat oven to 400 F degrees.

In a large bowl, whisk together oil, honey, eggs, sugar, extract and orange juice. In another bowl mix flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and orange zest and then combine with the wet ingredients. Then add the oats if you need to, the rosemary, or if you want- some corn, nuts, or craisins.

Pour batter into prepared muffin pan and sprinkle the top with remaining 2 tablespoons of sugar. I used a giant muffin pan to make larger muffins. They will cook around 20 mins, maybe 25. Mine came out a little dry because I wasn't paying attention!! I hate a dry muffin. I guess that's why god made butter and jam. These would be awesome toasted with some raspberry jam.