Biscuits

I have often made biscuits before, and have what I consider to be a pretty good recipe. I'll warn you in advance that it is by no means the best recipe... I'm still on the lookout for another one that's better, but this one is pretty good.
I wanted strawberry shortcake... I'd recently purchased strawberries on sale, and had some cream to make whipped cream, so I decided to mix up a batch of biscuits to go along.

4 C. Flour
8 tsp. Baking Powder
4 tsp. Sugar
1 tsp. Cr. of Tartar
1 tsp. Salt
1 C. Shortening
1 1/3 C. Milk

I started by mixing up the dry ingredients. I had run out of white flour so I used wheat flour as a substitute. Looking back, it was not the best decision. The biscuits are simply not as good when made with wheat, instead of white, but that could be just what I'm used to.

After that was all mixed up, I added the shortening, and cut it together. The regular kitchen tool for this task was missing, and I used a potato masher instead. It worked wonderfully.

Next, I poured in the milk. Notice the one and only picture in this entire blog that features me. Or my hand, anyway. :P

Then, I mixed it all together gently...

...and rolled it out on the floured table.

Using a cup, I cut out circles and placed them on a greased cookie sheet. Now, a little secret I learned awhile ago about biscuits, is that if you roll them extra thin, cut them into circles, and stack two circles on top of each other before baking (making sure to press the edges together pretty well) it makes them much easier to split later, after they've been baked. This, I did.

Then I baked them for about 10 minutes at 450˚.

Once they were done, I split them, and piled on the strawberries and cream. :D

Strawberry shortcake is seriously my favorite dessert, ever. ^_^

Blueberry Pi(e)

The other day, it was March 14th. For those of you not considered to be either a geek or a friend of a geek, let me share something with you. March 14th is Pi Day. Why, you may ask? Well, because March is the third month, making it 3/14. Which is Pi. It will be especially exciting on March 14th in 2015. :D
But I digress.
Now, being Pi day, I felt compelled to do something Pi-ish. Taking an important math test for college wasn't enough, so after I returned from school, I set to work in the kitchen. Pizza Pie and Blueberry Pie were both on the menu, but since I've already done a blog on pizza, I will only include here the Blueberry Pie recipe.

I started with a pie crust. I used to have a marvelous pie crust recipe from my grandmother, but I've lost it, and she wouldn't answer her phone, so I couldn't get it again. In the meantime, I pulled out our worn, well loved Better-Homes-and-Gardens cookbook.

2 C. All-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. Salt
2/3 C. Shortening
6-7 Tbsp. Cold water

I started by mixing the flour and the salt. Then I cut in the shortening, until it was forming small balls and coming out crumbly. The next step was to add the water. Throw it on top and gently toss with a fork until it's about the right consistency. What is the right consistency? Well, when you think the water is pretty well mixed in, smoosh half of the dough into a ball with your hands and put it onto your floured table or countertop. Roll it out. If it crumbles to smithereens and doesn't roll out well at all, you probably added too much flour. If it sticks all over the rolling pin and you're making an enormous mess, you probably didn't add enough, and need to add a bit more flour. Or you just need to flour the rolling pin better. Or both. :)

Once you've got it all figured out and rolled out, it's time to line your greased pie pan with it.
Then it's time to add the fruit. I was using blueberries, but obviously, this pie crust could be used for just about whatever you please. I'll have to share my Chicken Pot Pie recipe some day. :D
I started with a big bag of frozen blueberries. Fresh blueberries would have been much better, but seeing as it's March, blueberries are out of season, and I'm too poor to splurge on out of season fresh blueberries, I had to make due with frozen.

5 C. Fresh (or frozen! :P) blueberries
1 C. Sugar
1/4 C. All purpose flour
1 tsp. finely grated lemon peel
2 tsp Lemon juice
1 Tbsp Butter

I measured out the blueberries and mixed it with the sugar and flour. I actually ended up cutting the sugar amount down to about 3/4 Cup, and it tasted just fine. You could even cut it down further, if you wanted. The blueberries are pretty sweet on their own. Where it called for grated lemon peel, I just put in a splash of lemon juice. I had no lemon peel handy. I rarely do, and lemon juice has always served me well in this respect.

Then, I poured them into the pie crust and dotted the top with butter. I probably more than doubled the butter, but I like butter. :D
Once the blueberries were in, I rolled out the second crust and put it on top. You could do a lattice top if you wanted, but I had a specific purpose in mind for the slits in the top of this pie.

Yeah, so I'm a geek. :P
I baked the pie at 375˚ for 20 minutes with foil around the crust. Actually, I don't use foil. I use a pie crust shield. I love it. It makes pies so very much easier. My grandmother bought it for me for Christmas a few years ago, and it was a huge joke because, crust shield or not, my grandmother always scorches the edge of her pie crusts. Other than that, though, her pies are the best in the world. :D
Anyway, I baked it for 20 minutes, and then took off the crust shield and baked it for another 20-25 minutes, as per the recipe.
However, it was not done in 25 more minutes. Or 5 minutes after that. Or 5 minutes after that. Or... well.... it ended up taking more than 15 extra minutes for the pie to look done. Even then, I think I could have probably gotten away with 5 minutes more without burns. I'm not sure why it took so long, since I've made pies before and never had this problem, but oh well. It sure looked good!

I put the pie up to cool for a bit while I made dinner, and after dinner we each had a slice with some cream I had whipped up special for the occasion.

Apple Muffins

I was going to enter these apple muffins into the baking contest at our local harvest festival, but got some information messed up and missed out. Oh well... more for my family. :)

I started with a basic muffin recipe.
1 3/4 cups of flour,
1/3 cup sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1 beaten egg
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup cooking oil (I use olive oil)
1/4 tsp salt

Then, I added about 1/4 cup of applesauce, a chopped up medium apple, and a couple dashes of cinnamon.
Of course, I forgot to take pictures until the end.... I have a bad habit of doing that. :P
I baked them at 400 degrees. The recipe said 20 minutes, but I pulled them out after about 17, and they were nice and golden brown.

Next, I mixed up the apple filling. I chopped up two medium apples and mixed them with about a cup or so of applesauce, and a couple teaspoons of cinnamon and sugar. Then I scooped out the center of each muffin, and spooned the apple filling in.

















I filled all the muffins up, and replaced the tops, ready for icing!

















I thought maple would be pretty good on top, so I mixed some powdered sugar with a splash of heavy cream, and added maple syrup and granulate maple sugar. I can not tell you the portions, as it was pure guess work. Mostly, I just kept adding ingredients until it had the right consistency and taste. :P















I poured the icing into a plastic bag and piped it onto the muffins. Then we sprinkled the top with a pinch of granulated maple sugar.

















Aside from a couple lumps of baking powder; that made certain bites taste rather nasty; they came out quite delicious. Next year, perhaps, I'll get that blue ribbon. ^_^

Oreo Truffles

I first ate Oreo Truffles last year, in February, when a friend of mine made them for a get-together I attended. They were an immediate hit with my family, and since then they have been enjoyed many times, and as gifts from various people. They can be made in many different forms. I've had them made with Regular Oreos, Peanut Butter Oreos, and Mint Oreos. Hard to say which were my favorite, but mint and peanut butter are close ties.
And yet, I have never made any, myself. A shipping address for my collegiate brother, who happens to love Oreo Truffles, seemed the perfect time to make them.

I decided on Peanut Butter, and Golden Oreo Truffles. First up, of course, was to get the ingrediants. I purchased the Oreos and cream cheese the evening before I planned on making them, and having still three hungry siblings in the house, I decided to mark them so there was no doubt as to their availability for general consumption. ^_^


















I measured out about 2/3 of the Oreos and put them in a bag to be crushed. The recipe calls for 3 cups to mix with one box of cream cheese, and since a whole package of Oreos is about 4 1/2 cups, I figured this should be about right. It was. :)


















Crushing them with a rolling pin was not the best way to do it, I found out. I pounded them with a wooden mallet. That worked better. ^_^


















Next up, I mixed in the cream cheese. It made for a rather gooey mess, and I had to refrigerate them before rolling them into balls.


















Then, I rolled them into balls, and popped them back into the refrigerator before dipping them in chocolate.



















Rolling them in chocolate proved a bit harder than I thought. I think it might have had something to do with the fact that I used chocolate chips, instead of real baking chocolate, since it was cheaper. ^_^ You're supposed to use 8 squares of semi-sweet baking chocolate. I used a large handful of chocolate chips. :P


















I covered the Golden truffles with white chocolate, and the Peanut Butter truffles with milk chocolate. Then I drizzled the opposite color on top to make them more decorative. :P



















Jake, they're on their way to Virginia! :D

Chocolate-Cake-In-A-Cup

I have often heard of Chocolate-Cake-In-A-Cup. I have friends who have made it and said it was surprisingly delicious, but I have never actually done it myself. Well, I have this thing for doing things right. It's a bit of a perfectionist streak I have. If I'm not going to do it right, why do it at all. Therefore, when I make a meal, I like to go all out, and make it a nice meal. This usually includes dessert. :P

I had planned Beef Stroganoff for dinner (see previous post) and it was bubbling delightfully in the crockpot when I decided I really ought to have something for dessert. Into my head popped the idea of Chocolate-Cake-In-A-Cup. I quickly looked it up online and found several recipes for it. Very common recipe, I discovered, but thankfully they all pretty much listed the same ingredients.
4 Tablespoons each of flour and sugar, 2 Tablespoons of cocoa, an egg, and 3 Tablespoons each of milk and oil. Some recipes also listed an optional 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla and a small handful of chocolate chips. We were out of chocolate chips, but I did use the splash of vanilla.

Since there were four people in the house for dinner that night, I got out four mugs.



















I put in the first three, dry ingredients first, and mixed them together.




















Then I added the egg. The recipe said to mix it after the egg, but i found that that just made it pasty and sticky, so I waited until I'd added the other wet ingredients before trying to stir it.

















I added the milk and oil, and a tiny splash of vanilla (emphasis on tiny... one of the cups I added a bit too much to, and the taste was a bit off. Not bad, just not as good as it could have been >_<)

















I put the mugs on a plate and microwaved them on high for 3 minutes. I did each mug separately, since that's what the recipe called for, and I didn't want to mess with trying to do more than one at once.


























Once I got them out of the microwave, I let them sit for a minute, to cool off, then dumped them out of the mug. Add a bit of whipped heavy cream and voila! Insta-dessert!



















They tasted really good! Perhaps not as good as traditional chocolate cake, but for what they were, they were delicious. I did wish I'd had chocolate chips to put in them, or some chocolate sauce to drizzle on top, but ah well. I also am not sure they'd taste nearly as good if they weren't fresh and hot.
All in all, it was a success, and I'd definitely make it again. :)

Summer Harvest

A friend of ours with a large garden recently gave us lots of vegetables. Zucchini, Squash, and many Cucumbers.



















In an effort to cook all of them, I decided to challenge myself to make a full meal using at least one of those vegetables in each dish.

First up were the cucumber pickles. A favorite of mine since I was little, it's been awhile since I've made them. Slicing up all the cucumbers was easy, but then I realized we were out of onion. You simply cannot make cucumber pickles without onion and it looked like I'd have to make a trip to the store before I had planned to.
Instead, my sister's garden came to the rescue! She had planted onions that year, and I managed to dig up eight of the tiny vegetables to use. :)

After I set the cucumbers and onions to drain, I went off to the store to purchase the rest of the ingredients necessary to complete the meal.
Upon returning, I added the vinegar and sugar to the cucumbers and put them in the fridge to chill.



















On to the Summer Squash Bread!
I had two kinds of summer squash, so I grated up about a cup of each.



















The bread recipe called for nutmeg and cinnamon. After mixing all the ingredients, I took a small taste. It was rather delicious! I was going to put it in the regular bread pan, but decided to use a special bread pan acquired at a garage sale a few months back. It was designed to give bread that braided look.

In to the oven it goes!



















Moving on to the zucchini brownies, I decided to chop the pieces of zucchini smaller than I had the summer squash. I mixed up the whole concoction and had a taste. Not bad! A bit crunchy, but I figure the zucchini pieces will probably soften once they are baked in the brownies.



















The bread took longer to bake than I had hoped, but I think it may have been the fault of the pan. They finally finished, however, and it looked amazing!



















A quick taste proved the look true, and it quickly got added to my recipe book for future baking days.
The zucchini brownies did not take nearly as long to bake, but they were not quite the success I had hoped for. They came out, instead, rather flat. The taste was alright, but nothing phenomenal. Upon further examination of the recipe, I discovered that I had forgotten the baking soda. Explains the flatness. :P

























After those things were all ready, I started in on the main course. I diced up what was left of the squash and zucchini, and set it to steam on the stove



















I decided to add some fresh garlic, even though the recipe didn't exactly call for it. I have never cooked fresh garlic before, so I decided to just slice it up and saute it with the chicken.



















Then I put another pot of water on to boil, and added my pasta, while I used the front burner to saute the chicken and garlic in oil.


















20 minutes later, I took the veggies off the stove, drained the pasta, and cooked the last piece of chicken. With no further injuries than a few slight blisters from boiling olive oil, I considered my job well done. Quickly, I combined the pasta, veggies, chopped chicken and garlic.



















Then I added cubed mozzarella cheese, minced garlic, more olive oil, some sun-dried tomatoes, and parmesan cheese, and put it out on the table with the bread.




















I consider it to be rather a success, after having tasted it. I felt very Italian tonight. ^_^