These are THE best biscuits EVER! I make them all the time for biscuits and gravy. They are simple and easy enough to make in the morning. I use to make them with half whole-wheat flour, which is good, BUT they are so much lighter and fluffier when using all white flour. So you can decide, health or taste.
4 teaspoons powder
½ teaspoon salt
¼ cup butter
¼ cup shortening
1 egg
2/3 cup milk
P.S. This is not a Martha Recipe either...
I’m so behind on this blog, it’s ridiculous! I’ve been procrastinating on school work and what not, and so I haven’t been keeping up with my baking. But I finally feel like I’m somewhat caught up in classes, and am trying to start up baking more. J
Val and I made chocolate Halloween cupcakes. First of all it was such an ordeal, because we wanted to use these cute Halloween paper cupcake cups that Val found at Hobby Lobby, unfortunately they were forgotten when I picked up Val. L BUT-My mom had agreed to bring them by the next day. J Alas…she could not find them. She searched the car, Val’s room, the kitchen, but found nothing. L BUT-then my mom was nice enough to pick some up at Target, that were equally as cute. J Yay! So after the paper cupcake cups trauma had passed, we started our one-bowl chocolate cupcakes.
I decided to make 1 ½ recipe because it was only going to make 2 dozen, and recipes rarely make as much as they say anyway. I wanted to have enough to bring to work and for Val to take some home as well. So I thought 3 dozen would be plenty. I sifted all the dry ingredients together first and then started adding the wet ingredients. Everything was going fine, until I started to add the eggs, only to find out that one of my eggs had had a crack in it and stuck to carton and oozed egg everywhere. L Alas…this had been the exact amount of eggs I had needed, and now I was one short. Mayonnaise. Yes, you can substitute 3 tablespoons of mayo for 1 whole egg. So this is what I did. I also added a cup of mini chocolate chips just for fun!
I must have added too much mayo or maybe I should have lessened the oil, since I added the mayo, because after baking the first dozen, the middles had sunken. L So before scooping out the second dozen I added some more flour and lowered the temp of the oven. The second dozen came out better, but still didn’t rise as much as I wanted, but I kept on baking and before I knew it the recipe had made like 5 dozen cupcakes!! There were so many! And we had to decorate them all!
We did spiderwebs, ghosties, pumpkins, jack o’lanterns, headstones, and then we got to the last dozen and just slapped on the Halloween sprinkles and sugar, because we were tired of being intricate with our designs.
They turned out REALLY moist and yummy despite the mishap. And also really cute!
Unfortunately for this blog, this is not a Martha Stewart recipe. Seeing the pictures of her chocolate chunk cookies made me decide not to go along with her recipe. Though, mine were not as good as I would have like them to be either. I’ve tweaked this recipe from a recipe I found at allrecipes.com, and it’s still a work in progress. I like the texture and the softness of them, but I’ve decided that the dough needs a little more sugar added to it. I like my chocolate chip cookies soft and little, and that’s exactly what these are. I’m not a fan of crunchy cookies, unless they are gingersnaps, and even those I make on the soft side. J (I know I set the date on this forever ago, but that’s when I made them, so I try to post the day I made them, not the day I actually posted it.)
Now this recipe is yummy! I used the recipe for the Plum Oat Crisp, but used peaches instead, because I have a peach tree too! I just picked most of them off the tree yesterday. They’re delicious! I already have 5 quarts in the freezer, 2 crisps, and still a grocery bag full of them that I need to peel and slice. I would much rather pick peaches any day than blackberries, let me tell you. The only thing you have to worry about is the occasional earwig. J
I was in the middle of making one of these crisps when Matt asked if I wanted to go to a family thing with him, so I decided to make a second to take with us. Plus I had plenty of peaches to share!
I am so fast at peeling peaches now, because of how many I have had to peel. I actually watched a movie and an episode of The Brady Bunch before I got through one bag. So I quickly peeled the freshly pick peaches and put them in a bowl with some sugar, lemon juice and tapioca (rather than the cornstarch again).
To make the crisp I put whole wheat flour, oats, butter, some cinnamon, and brown sugar and mixed them up. Mmm…my favorite part… although peaches are good too.
I have learned to always butter my pans whether the instructions say so or not, because too many times have I had something stick. Oh, I am loving non-stick spray! I never bought it, until Matt bought some to use on the grill, wow, so much easier than shortening! So I sprayed my pan before I put the peaches in and crumbled the topping on top. I squeezed the topping in my hand before I crumbled it on top, so that there would be a variety of crumbling pieces.
It smelled amazing baking! So yummy! It was especially nice too last night because it was chilly outside, so it warmed up my little house. J
Matt and I ate this warm with vanilla ice cream on top! It was great!
Also – the tapioca is great! Even with the peaches, I did even notice it, and it makes it so it isn’t runny at all!
So I made the first horrible recipe. It was gross I couldn’t even eat it. The recipe was basically an apple upside down tart. Which sounds good right? It looked good too, but it was WAY sweet. I mean, OVERLY sweet!
Basically you take a cup of sugar and some water and caramelize that to a amber brown. You put that in a pie pan that has been buttered which you then put little pats of butter in and the quartered apples. Then you lay the tart dough on top of that. It still sounds good? Yes, I know, even smelled good when I baked it. But wow, it was incredibly sweet, that I could only take one bite out of it. Plus, I’m not a big fan of caramel, so I wasn’t too fond of the taste either.
The one good thing that came out of it though, was that I got to use my new peeler and apple corer! Man, the apple corer is amazing! The cores shot out of it like bullets! It was crazy!
Banana bread is best made with super ripe bananas, which is why I always end up making it when I have old brown bananas that there is NO WAY I would want to eat them plain. My mom gave me the bananas for this recipe, which they happened to be completely black and great for bread.
Let me just start out by saying this is one of Matt’s favorite baked good, and I don’t think I’ve EVER seen him this excited. He was jumping up and down like a little kid while it was baking! J
I really stuck to the recipe pretty well on this one actually. I did put in a cup of whole-wheat flour (like I usually do) and I cut down the sugar by ¾ cup. It called for 2 cups of sugar to only 3 cups of flour! That’s a ton! Plus bananas are really sweet on their own. So I started by only putting in a cup and tasting it and decided it needed a bit more. It would have been overly sweet with the 2 cups.
I’m also not a big fan of nuts…as I’ve mention, but Matt was the one that was most excited for this and he said yes to the nuts. So I compromised and got pecans instead of walnuts and I only put in a ½ cup instead a whole cup. J I like pecans.
I mixed it all together and put it into the oven - the longest part. The best thing about banana bread is that it’s not really “bread” in that it doesn’t call for yeast. I don’t know why, but I’m super scared of using yeast and dry to avoid it all cost. We shall see what happens when I come to the “Yeasted Goods” section in Martha’s book.
So after an episode of “Dexter” (which btw if you haven’t seen it, is awesome, and everyone should watch it!) and a few pauses in between to see how the loaf was coming along, the bread was done. It was a bit poufy in the middle and quite brown on the sides. For the second loaf I turned down the oven to 325˚. It cooked more evenly. I think it was probably because I was using a glass pan as opposed to a metal pan, so it cooked faster. I noted this for the future. J
The bread was barely cool for 10 minutes before Matt wanted to cut into it. He said it was amazing. J So I gave him the second loaf to take with him to the restaurant he works at…or I said he could keep it to himself. Haha, I think he may eat it all before he makes it back home. J
I even liked it with the pecans in it, which surprised me. Woot! Another success!
This is the a cross between a pie and a cobbler. The crust is more like a cobbler, but it’s formed in the shape of a pie.
The crust is your basic flour, sugar, butter mixture, but it also called for a cup of almonds. Nuts are like gold, or so it seems. So it probably works out that I don’t usually like nuts in my baked goods. This recipe seemed like it would really be awesome it in it though, but I couldn’t justify buying them still. Instead I put in 2 teaspoons of almond extract and a cup of oats. I think it was a good substitute. It still had the almond flavor at least. J So about 2/3 of that mixture you press and freeze for 15 minutes in the pie pan. Then you keep a 1 ½ or so to be sprinkled on the top.
The apple mixture was the basic apples, cinnamon, sugar, and nutmeg mixture poured into the firm crust. I sprinkled the top with the rest of cobbler crust and into the oven it went.
The overall recipe was pretty basic. It was just time consuming with all the apples that had to be peeled and cored and sliced. It was after this that I bought a peeler and an apple corer. Haha, now I have to make something else involving apples so I can christen both of them. ;)
I brought this pie to a campout get together and ended up having to split if 12 ways! There were probably only 3 bites per person, but I think everyone enjoyed it! Next time I’ll make more!
Woot! Another recipe down! This one I was much more happy with, surprisingly! I usually make sweet dishes, since the majority of baking is sweet, but this one is a savory dish. A delicious savory dish I might add, even if it sounds a bit weird by the name. J It’s exactly what it sounds like, a tomato tart. You put roasted garlic, tomatoes, cheese, and fresh basil sprinkled on top in a tart crust. Yum!
So first of all, I had to roast my garlic. This was a first. I actually didn’t even know that a head of garlic was the WHOLE thing, ALL the cloves, which is what it called for. I know! A whole head of garlic! I thought this was a lot, but since it is roasted, it takes on a much more milder flavor than the intense flavor of fresh garlic.
I pulled apart my cloves of garlic, leaving on the skins, and placed them on a piece of foil. I drizzled them with olive oil and put them in the oven at 350˚ for about 30 minutes, 15 minutes less than the recipe called for. Which even then I think was a bit much. Some of the smaller cloves were a bit singed on one side. Not too bad for my first time roasting garlic though!
While the garlic was roasting in the oven (which is one of the MOST amazing smells in the world!) I made my tart dough. I used Martha’s recipe this time, because the “Paté Brisee” recipe I had was for sweet tarts. Again, I wanted to make my dough a bit healthier, so I added whole-wheat flour instead of white flour. I know…you would think I would have learned my lesson with my pie dough, but I thought this is tart dough, it’s different, I’ll give it another chance. I didn’t chill it for very long, only about 10 minutes, because I was using my fresh butter again.
I sliced my fresh tomatoes (courtesy of Miranda’s garden J) getting ready to assemble my tart. The recipe called for fontina cheese, which I had never heard of…btw, so I asked my cook boyfriend, Matt, what kind of cheese it was, and if I could switch it with mozzarella. This was a good idea, because I found out at the store that it would have cost me about four dollars extra for fewer ounces for the fontina than it would for more ounces of the mozzarella. So..being the poor college student that I am, I bought the on-sale mozzarella. J
I rolled out my tart dough and pressed it into my tart pan (which I had never used, even though I bought it back in April!). Once my garlic was roasted I took the cloves out of their skins and mashed them with a fork. I smeared the mashed garlic on the bottom of my tart crust, along with a sprinkling of cheese. Then I arranged my tomatoes in a circular formation from the edge in, along with salt and pepper. I sprinkled more cheese on top of that – much more than the recipe called for, because I’m a cheese fiend. I also drizzled it with some roasted red pepper dressing that Matt made, instead of the olive oil the recipe called for. I also sprinkled some red pepper flakes on top as well, because I like a little spice. J Into the oven it went.
Mmm…now this smelled amazing when it was baking. You can’t even imagine! If I could put a scratch and sniff button on here I would! After about a half an hour it was done. I pulled it out, and let it cool a little bit before I sprinkled fresh basil and some parmesan cheese.
It was amazing! I ate 3 slices on my own! Actually I ate nearly the whole tart on my own in a matter of a few days. J It was so good though. And the crust with the whole-wheat flour worked out great! It was crispy and salty and yummy. I will definitely be making this again! I thought it might be good to add some spinach next time. The best part was that it was super easy! I came home after being on campus for 9 hours and I’m usually not in the mood to cook, but this was so simple and delicious, plus I had leftovers for the rest of the week. J
I do have to say though, the crust is definitely not as good after being reheated in the microwave, but I was impressed with how well it did hold up. You could reheat it in the oven at 300˚ and it would probably be much better. I just didn’t want to heat up my whole house for a slice of tart. J
My first entry with my first recipe: Blackberry-Apple Pie (Inspired by Martha’s Blackberry-Apricot Galette). I say inspired by, because as a baker I tend to change a few things here and there on recipes.As many of you know I have a quite an abundance of blackberries in my new back yard. (FYI blackberries are a pain to pick! Literally!) I can’t seem to get out there fast enough to pick them before they shrivel up like raisins. I have been able to pick quite a few though. I also have three (yes there!) apple trees. I know Martha calls for apricot in her recipe, but since I can get plenty of apples for FREE I chose those over the apricots. J
To begin I first had to go through the treacherous task of gathering my fresh fruit. The apples were not painful, but a bit tricky to find ones without wormholes in them. Though I confess, I did use some with holes, but don’t worry, I cut all the bad parts out! The blackberries were the problem. Not only are blackberry bushes the MOST evil of bushes because they are COVERED with prickly thorns, but the farther in you seem to step, the more spiders you seem to find. In my opinion I’d rather the thorns over the spiders, because at least you know you can’t die from getting a thorn scratch. With the help of cardboard boxes, long pants, and shoes that weren’t made out of foam, I was able to get all the blackberries, plus some, for my pie.
I washed the berries and let them drain, while I started on my pie dough. Martha’s recipe calls for her Cornmeal Paté Brisee (which is French for tart dough), but I wanted to make a more traditional pie rather than her rustic “galette.” So I used my own pie crust recipe. (Val say’s this is cheating…) I did end up changing my recipe a bit by substituting a cup of white flour for a cup of whole-wheat flour, (which I would later find that I didn’t like it…) I mix my dough together using homemade fresh butter (courtesy of Tom and Jim’s farm J) with my hands. I don’t own a pastry blender, but I’ve found that your hands work just as well or better, because your hands warm the butter a little, which combines the dough better. It’s just a little messier. J I usually put in a few tablespoons of vinegar as well to make the crust flakeier, but alas, I am out, so I continue with water and chill it in the fridge while I work on my filling.
I peel my apples with a peeler I found from our old camping supplies. It doubles as a corer as well. This was a bad idea. The peeler was SO dull that I had to press so hard it wasn’t any easier than a knife, PLUS I ended up jabbing my thumb with one of coring points. Into the trash that goes and I finish with a sharp knife. I slice, core, and put my apples into citric acid water to prevent them from browning. I mixed the sugar, berries, apples, lemon juice, and instead of using cornstarch to thicken the mixture I used tapioca – (besides I have TONS of tapioca and no cornstarch). Weird right? Who has tapioca and no cornstarch? Yes, me. Though I wouldn’t have any tapioca if Matt hadn’t brought me a huge ton of it from work. I also added ¼ teaspoon cinnamon even though the recipe didn’t call for it, but I thought it would be good with the apples and add warmth. Cinnamon always makes me feel warm. J
So I’ve let my dough chill for while, not quite an hour. Which I find was too long, only because the fresh butter gets much harder than store bought butter. After the dough warms up a bit I roll it out and put it in my glass pan. I pour my filling into the crust, which I found was a bit shallow for how tall my pie pan was, so I took my extra apples and arranged them in a circle around the edge and pile my extra berries in the middle. Though after baking you wouldn’t be able to tell this at all! The apples were so completely dyed by the blackberries it didn’t look much different from each other. J I decided that I would do a lattice crust on top, so I roll out my other half of dough and slice them into strips. This is when I realize that I really do need a pizza cutter! J A knife just doesn’t cut it. Literally! J I made it work though. I put an egg wash over top and sprinkled it with sugar.
The best part is actually placing the pie in the oven though. Although, it’s also the worst part, because you can smell it, but you have to wait till it’s done. ;) While it was baking though, for some reason, I kept smelling macaroni and cheese! Haha, a berry pie smelling of macaroni and cheese? I don’t know, I must be crazy! Anyway, it turned out great. The apples could have been cooked a little longer and it was a little tart for my taste, but it was good. The crust was not so much… I decided that I will not put whole-wheat flour in my pie crust again. It was really tough and without the vinegar it wasn’t flakey either. Oh well, Thanksgiving is just around the corner. I can try again. J
