The Best Buttermilk Biscuits Ever

Alton Brown's Buttermilk Biscuits and my interpretation:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Mix dry ingredients together in a bowl:
2 cups flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt

Add
2 tbs butter
2 tbs shortening

With your friendly fingers, pinch and crumble the butter and shortening into the flour until . . . crumbly.

Add
1 C buttermilk (half a pint, if you were curious. Suck it up and buy buttermilk; don't use milk.)

Fold and mix batter gently with a rubber spatula until you have a ball of dough. On a floured surface, flatten that ball to 1" thick. Cut with round biscuit cutter or (what I use) a glass. I usually get 8 or so biscuits.

Bake on greased cookie sheet for approximately 15 minutes. I'm not a fan of the brown, bitter taste of an over-baked biscuit. Finicky overly or underly hot ovens should be watched! When the biscuits are or lightly golden and speckled on top they're ready. The bits of butter brown and give it that speckled look--not to be confused as whole wheat speckles because we're not interested in healthy, fibrous foods. Heavens no. 

Cheesy Twist: Add 1/2 cup grated Asiago (or other cheese) and/or 1 tsp garlic powder to the dough. 

Slather with BUTTER  (as this is really just a butter medium recipe) and pull out your homemade jams and honey! Serve piping hot. 

Recipes: White Bean and Bacon with Spinach Soup

This is one of my husband's favorite dinners. He says it tastes like he's eating bacon. Even my super-super-super picky two-year-old eats this up while he'd normally steer clear of spinach and beans presented in any other form. Bacon is magical. A spoonful of bacon makes the medicine go down, apparently! 

Ingredients:

1 lb dry navy beans

2 cans chicken broth 

Bay leaves 

1 large onion

1 clove garlic 

2 carrots (or 1 small sweet potato)

1 package bacon, chopped into 1/2" pieces (or ham/ham bone) 

Spices: pepper, sage, thyme, paprika, creole seasoning, nutmeg, garlic powder (if fresh garlic missing), honey/brown sugar

1 block frozen leaf or chopped spinach OR fresh spinach leaves 

Crusty sourdough bread or buttermilk biscuits with butter

Instructions: 

Soak 1 bag navy beans overnight. Drain and put in crock pot on low if cooking 8+ hours or high if cooking 5-6. Or simmer on stovetop for 3 hrs. 

Add 2 cans chicken broth and water until liquid is maybe 1" above the beans. Add two bay leaves. 

A couple hours before you plan to eat, add the other stuff. Dice one onion, a couple carrots, and cut up a pack of bacon into 1/2" pieces. 

Cook bacon a little and drain grease. Add onions and cook till starting to brown/turn clear. Add carrots. Season sautée with fresh ground pepper, creole seasoning, sage, thyme, paprika, and a couple dashes nutmeg. Add to crock pot. 

Drizzle a little bit of honey (1 tsp or 1 tsp brown sugar)--a good trick for savory soups to tone down any bitterness. It's like adding salt to cookies. A little sweet in the salty. 

Add frozen block of leaf or chopped spinach. 

Before serving salt to taste. Serve with crusty bread or biscuits with BUTTER, the very best part. 

Homemade Flavored Butter

I was whipping up some cream for a strawberry shortcake party and left the Kitchen Aid running a bit too long. When I came back, the cream had separated into some kind of weird chunky stuff in watery liquid.

Turns out that's how you make butter.

Just for jollies, I strained and kept it, forming it into this little cake an a small ceramic bowl. And guess what? It turned out deliciously! (Of course it did--it's butter.) I had added a little vanilla, a touch of sugar, and lemon zest to what I thought would become whipped cream and ended up with a lemony, sweet butter spread instead.

So I assume that if you want to make some kind of flavored butter, just add what you want to some whipping cream, turn your mixer on high, and forget what you were doing because you'll come back to something fattening and delicious--a winning combination.

Crazy Cake Recipes: The Hamburger Cake

We've made the Hamburger Cake twice for fundraising auctions. Big hit. The following execution is based on Coolest Hamburger Cake 52, which cake looks [okay, fine, yeah, a little] better than ours.

Approaching the Hamburger Cake

Buns: Two 8" "improved" yellow pound cakes (boxed yellow cake mix plus a box of vanilla pudding and an extra egg).

Burger: One thick 8" brownie with edges trimmed off and rounded into a patty-like shape.

Lettuce, Tomato, and Cheese: Colored fondant (I halved this recipe, substituting corn syrup with high-fructose-corn-syrup-based Safeway maple syrup. I figured they were basically the same thing and it worked just fine. Excellent!

Buttercream Frosting: Food Network's recipe is very tasty. Mix butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, and whipping cream.

Sesame Seeds: Pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds.

Assembly: Pick a decent base to start with because moving this thing around is not easy. Spread some frosting between the layers to stick everything together, including on the vegetable-shaped fondant pieces (which don't go all the way through the middle of the burger; the lettuce, tomato, and cheese are just tucked in around the edges).

Oh so domestic, Duncan Hines and all!

Recipes: Szechuan Noodles in Peanut Sauce

You can't go wrong with peanut sauce. Unless you're allergic.

As one of our family favs, this is a great dish that will feed lots of hungry mouths. Enjoy!

Mistledoes's Szechuan Noodles

*Sauce Ingredients:
4-6 Cloves Garlic
1/2 Cup Veggie Oil
1 Cup Peanut Butter
1 1/4 Cup Warm Water
1/2 Cup Soy Sauce
1/3 Cup Rice (or Red Wine) Vinegar
3 Tbs Sesame Oil
1/2 Cup Honey (corn syrup or brown sugar may be substituted--can use less if peanut butter is sweetened)
1 tsp Cayenne/Crushed Red Pepper (or more for a spicy kick)
1 Tbs Black Pepper

Blend in blender until blended. Sauce keeps well in fridge for, I dunno, a week or so.
*Note: This is great recipe to double and freeze half or all of the peanut sauce for future use. Or take it camping with dry noodles to cook up on site to feed a large group.

Other Ingredients:
2 lb Linguine
2-3 Grilled or Foremanned Chicken Breasts or Boneless Skinless Thighs (cut into strips--can be marinated previously in soy sauce, sugar, and rice vinegar if you have time.)

Veggies (Sauteed briefly in 1-2 tbs oil before tossing with noodles and sauce)
2 or 3 Red Bell Peppers (cut into strips)
1 Bag Bean Sprouts (add last so they're not too soggy, or use fresh as garnish when serving)
1 Bunch Green Onions, cut into large pieces

Cook pasta al dente (in salted water!!!!) according to instructions and drain. Mix some sauce in to keep noodles from sticking if you're still preparing veggies. When veggies are hot and still a little crisp (not soggy), toss them with the noodles and chicken, adding more sauce until at desired sauciness. Serve warm. Mmm.

Ridiculously Rich Almond Flour Fudge Brownies

A friend shared a sugar-free almond flour brownie recipe with me, but let's be honest. I can't make brownies without sugar and chocolate chips. So this is what I came up with. This recipe is gluten-free if you care about that kind of thing.

Mistledoe's Ridiculously Rich Almond Fudge Brownies

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease an 8x8 glass or metal pan and set aside.

Mix:
1/3 C brown sugar
1/3 C white sugar
1/2 C butter melted
1 Tbs vanilla
3 eggs

Add:
1/2 C almond flour
1/4 C brown rice flour
1/4 C white rice flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 C Ghirardelli unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 C chocolate chips

Optional:
Add 1/3 C chopped walnuts
Top with powdered sugar
Drizzle with hot fudge
Eat entire pan

Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream. Sleep peacefully.

Note: Almond Flours 
I used blanched bulk almond flour from Winco which I found was more finely ground and not as gritty as Trader Joe's almond meal and Bob's Red Mill almond meal, so the brownies have a really nice fudgy texture when combined with the even more finely ground rice flours.

Chocolate-dipped Oreos

If you ever have extra melted candy-making chocolate, things might get a little out of hand. Oreos and almonds were our targeted subjects. Didn't have bacon on hand.

Recipes: Chocolate-covered Strawberries

I was in Utah for my sister-in-law's wedding and my mother-in-law had the idea to make chocolate safari animals as thank-you favors to give out at the African-themed wedding reception. Because I had trouble tempering milk chocolate for my Boy Scout chocolate experiment a couple weeks prior, we went to a candy makers supply store, Baker's Cash & Carry in Murray, Utah for some professional advice. 

There we discovered the world of candy making and supplies. It was like Willy Wonka's factory. We taste-tested chocolate wafers made for candy molds and went to town making hundreds of safari animal candies that week. 

What we learned about chocolate wafers is that unlike real chocolate, which has a cocoa butter base, the wafers for candy molds have a vegetable oil base so they don't require tempering and won't have cocoa butter streaks when they set. Winco carries candy wafers in the bulk section in all sorts of colors for melting if you ever want to play with it. I had no idea what they were before. 

Anyway, I brought home some of the extra wafers and was excited we had them on hand so I could use them again for some dipping. The chocolate melts so quickly in the microwave and sets super fast with a short chill. I didn't even have to put these in the fridge to set; I just set the plate by the open window and the cool night air was perfect for hardening the chocolate.

Looks like I'll be eating a lot more chocolate in my future. This stuff is far too easy to work with.

Recipes: Shroomin' Cheesy Mini Quiches

I wanted to make personal quiches for my son's birthday brunch, but I didn't want them to be tiny, like the ones you would make in mini muffin cups, the little 2" variety. Rather, I wanted them to be more like "personal" size quiches--like fun size instead of bite size.

So I kinda made this recipe up. I looked at a few recipes but couldn't find quite what I was looking for, so here's what I ended up with, and it turned out really well!

Ingredients
2 boxes premade refrigerated pie crusts (4 crusts total)
4 eggs
1/2 C grated/fancy-shred Parmesan
1/4 C grated cheddar
1/2 red pepper, diced and sauteed
3 white mushrooms, sliced and sauteed
1 1/4 C whole milk or half-n-half
1/3 C whipping cream (optional)
smoked or regular paprika
fresh-ground black pepper
dash Creole seasoning (I like Tony Chachere's)

Directions
Cut up each pie crust into 6 pieces (you can stack all four and cut them at once using a knife or pizza cutter). Ball up portions of the dough, roll them out, and fit them into 2 muffin pans for 24 quiches.

Filling: Mixture the 4 eggs, Parmesan, cheddar, milk/half-n-half, whipping cream (again, optional), and spices. Sautee the red bell peppers and mushrooms and let cool before mixing them in. Spoon filling into each muffin with just enough for all 24.

Baked them at 350° for about 30 minutes or until the crusts started browning. Super rich and delicious!