WHIPPING CREAM BISCUITS

I'm always looking for new and different biscuit recipes.  I have a friend who loves nothing more than a gift of biscuits. These happen to be just about the easiest I've ever done.  Just two ingredients and they taste really, really good.

WHIPPING CREAM BISCUITS

2 cups self-rising flour
1-1/2 cups heavy whipping cream
2 tablespoons oil or butter

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Pour oil or butter in a 9-inch pie plate.  Stir together 2 cups self-rising flour and 1-1/2 cups heavy whipping cream.  Pour out over a lightly floured surface and pat down to about 1 inch thick.  Cut with a biscuit cutter (I use an old Contadina tomato sauce can that was my Mama's).  Place on greased pie plate.  Bake in oven for 12-15 minutes or until lightly browned.  Can brush with melted butter after taking out of the oven.

7-Up Biscuits

I have a friend whose favorite gift from my kitchen is biscuits.  I normally use my favorite recipe which I posted years ago Very Best Buttermilk Biscuits.

I didn't have ingredients for my usual recipe and a coworker had made these and brought to work so I thought I would try them.  Very easy, but not quite as good as buttermilk biscuits.  You can't taste the 7-Up.  It does make a light biscuit though.

7-UP BISCUITS

4 cups Bisquick
1 8 oz. container sour cream
1 cup 7-Up or any lemon-lime soda
1/4 cup butter

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.  In a 9 x 13 pan, melt the butter.  In a bowl cut the sour cream into the Bisquick until well mixed.  Add soda.  Stir together and roll out onto floured surface.  Cut into 12 biscuits and place in buttered pan.

Bake at 450 degrees for 12-14 minutes until golden brown.  Butter tops of biscuits right out oven.

Green Chile Corn Bites

I recently went to a birthday party where they were serving chili.  I thought these would make a good addition.  I used Paula Deen's recipe for Green Chili Corn Muffins out of her Paula Deen and Friends cookbook and used my mini-muffin pan.  Just the right size.

GREEN CHILE CORN BITES

1/2 cup canola oil
4 ounce can chopped green chilies
1 cup sour cream
8 ounce can cream-style corn
1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cup stone-ground cornmeal
2   eggs, lightly beaten 

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Spray miniature muffin tins with vegetable oil cooking spray.  In a small mixing bowl, combine the cornmeal, salt and baking powder, stirring with a metal spoon.  Add the cheese, corn, sour cream, and chilies. Stir until lightly combined. Add the oil and eggs and stir until everything is just combined; do not over mix. The batter will be very stiff.  Place about 1/2 tablespoon of batter into each muffin cup. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I've always wanted to try to make Irish Soda Bread.  Being yeast challenged and this being a quick bread I am surprised I hadn't made it until now.  So few ingredients and such an easy thing.  I can tell it was a peasant bread when folks didn't have access to yeast so the buttermilk and the soda interact to make it rise.  It would be good with some Guiness Stew I think.  May the luck of the Irish be with you today!

IRISH SODA BREAD

3 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 cups buttermilk

Mix dry ingredients together in a bowl.  Make a well in the middle.  Mix together until dough comes together.  Turn out onto a floured surface and knead into a small round.  Take a sharp knife and cut an X in the top.  Bake at 375 degrees for 40 minutes or until golden brown.  Brush melted butter on top.  Enjoy with some Kerrygold Irish Butter.

School House Rolls

When I was in elementary school the lunch ladies would make the most wonderful yeast rolls. Sometimes I would just have rolls for lunch with a glass of sweet tea. Over the years I have looked for a recipe to make them. When I visited my friend's Mama last month I was talking about these rolls and she had a clipping from their local paper that had a recipe for these rolls. They are pretty near to what I remember, except for the wheat flour. If I made them again I might try to use all white to see if that recreates from my memory the lunch ladies rolls from the past. These are a really dense, yeast-flavored roll. I'm usually challenged by yeast but this recipe doesn't involve a lot of steps and has such a quick rise time, they were really easy. I guess lunch ladies don't have a lot of time to wait around for rolls to rise when they are feeding lots of hungry kiddoes!

SCHOOL HOUSE ROLLS

2 cups lukewarm water
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons yeast (3 packets)
1/2 tablespoon salt
1/2 cup powdered milk
24 ounces (by weight) or 4 cups white flour
6 ounces (by weight) or 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
Plus some additional flour to achieve correct consistency.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine warm water and oil in bowl of a mixer. In a separate bowl, combine sugar, yeast, salt, powdered milk, white and whole wheat flour. Using a fairly heavy duty mixer slowly add flour to liquid beating with each addition. Add sufficient white flour so that the dough is not sticky. Knead dough into a ball and place in a large bowl. Cover with a cloth and let rise for 15 minutes in a warm place. Punch down , cover and allow to rise another 5 minutes. Shape into 2 ounce pieces of dough (about 1/3 cup) and place in a greased a 9 x 13 baking pan. (I got an additional pie plate of about 5 rolls too). Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes until nicely brown. Baste with butter when you take them from the oven.

Monkey Bread

Today at work we had a surprise breakfast celebration for a young man who is getting married and just bought his first home. I took Monkey Bread and also Banana Bread. Monkey bread is another one of those recipes that has been around for a long time and has a few variations. Pardon my retro Tupperware cake carrier plate, it's not the best picture.

MONKEY BREAD

4 cans refrigerated biscuits (not the flaky kind)
1 cup granulated sugar
2-3 teaspoons cinnamon (I used 2)
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 1/2 sticks butter (3/4 cup)
Chopped pecans (optional) You can use raisins if you like also.


Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-10 inch tube pan. Mix white sugar and cinnamon in a medium sized plastic bag. (I used a plastic container with a lid.) Cut the biscuits into 4 pieces. Place several quarters at a time in the sugar and cinnamon mixture and toss to coat. Arrange the pieces in the greased pan. Layer with pecans or raisins. Continue layering until all the biscuit pieces are coated and in the pan. In a small saucepan, melt the butter with the brown sugar until dissolved well. Pour over layered biscuits. Bake 35-40 minutes until brown. A good idea to put a cookie sheet under as this raises pretty high and you don't want a spillover. Let bread cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a plate. Pull apart and enjoy!

I also wanted to use my new Nordicware loaf pan I got on eBay. I love Nordicware pans. I used my usual 'go to' banana bread as it makes a lot of batter. The picture doesn't do the sliced pieces justice -- this has a really nice crumb to it. This recipe made this large loaf and also a small 8 inch loaf. You can get the recipe from an earlier post Banana Bread.

Happy Easter!

When I was married, my late mother-in-law would make homemade yeast rolls for Easter. Although I do have her handwritten recipe, I am very challenged when it comes to making yeast breads. My sister tells me she makes refrigerator rolls, but her recipe was made with 5 pounds of flour! I went in search of an easy recipe and found this one. I 'practiced' last week and these turned out really easy and tasted good. Sadly, today for Easter dinner they did not turn out as good as these did -- bah! They really are easy though and worth trying again and again until I get it perfect.

NO FAIL REFRIGERATOR ROLLS

Mix together 1 egg, 1 teaspoon salt, 1/2 cup sugar

Dissolve 1 packet yeast in 2 cups lukewarm water

Combine the egg mixture and the yeast mixture.

Stir in 2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour (I actually used Gold Medal Better for Bread flour)

Mix well.

Stir in 2-1/2 more cups of flour.

Mix well.

Add 3 tablespoons melted shortening or butter.

Stir again until all flour is incorporated. Let rise until doubled. Stir down and refrigerate. About and hour and half before you want to serve the rolls form into rolls and place into a greased pan. Let rise. Bake at 350 until golden -- about 14 minutes. This dough will last up to a week in the refrigerator.

MEIER & FRANK BEER ROLLS

I was inspired by Em at Sugar Plum Sweets when she made her beer buttermilk biscuits. I have had this recipe in my 'to try' files for years. I've made beer bread lots in the past but never thought of making it into rolls. This recipe calls for a beer that I had not seen before. My son brews his own beer and I was thinking I could use some of his home brew, but he gave me this beer to use and I think it worked well. In the past I could always taste the beer in the bread, this is very subtle. I tried to do some research on what Meier & Frank was and it points to a department store in Portland, Oregon that was kind of a precursor to Macy's. Apparently there was a restaurant there called the Georgian Room that served these rolls. I think they would be a nice addition to any meal and they go together really quickly and are easy.

MEIER & FRANK BEER ROLLS

1 12-ounce bottle hefeweizen beer
1-1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil
5 tablespoons granulated sugar (I only used 3)
3-1/4 to 3-1/2 cups self-rising flour
Melted butter

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Grease a 9x13 baking pan. In a large mixing bowl, stir together the beer, oil, and sugar. Add 3 1/4 cups flour and stir until just combined. If the mixture is too wet, add an additional 1/4 cup flour and just barely mix in. Turn the dough out onto a well-floured board and knead 4 or 5 times. Pat or roll the dough 3/4 inch. Cut rolls with a 3-inch biscuit cutter and arrange the rolls in the greased pan. Reroll and recut dough scraps as necessary. Bake 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove from oven and brush with melted butter. Turn out onto a wire rack to cool slightly. Makes 12 rolls.

Quick Cheddar Bread

I've always been yeast challenged when baking bread. I even took a bread baking class once but it wasn't 'hands-on' enough for me to really learn. I am going to challenge myself this year to try some yeast breads, but in the mean time here is a recipe that I've had in my files to try that doesn't require yeast. It calls for baking in a 9 inch loaf pan, but I think it might be better to try a smaller one so it's not so 'short'. In either case, it has a nice consistency.

QUICK CHEDDAR BREAD

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick butter
1 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese
1 finely diced green onion
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon dried parsley
1-1/4 cups milk
1 egg, lightly beaten

Preheat the oven to 350°. Grease a 9" loaf pan. In a large bowl, mix the flour with the baking powder and salt. Using two knives or a pastry blender, cut in the butter until the mixture resembles course crumbs. Stir in the cheese, onion, garlic, and parsley; mix well. Combine the milk and egg; pour into the flour mixture. Stir just until moistened. Turn into the prepared pan. Bake for 40-50 minutes or until the top is golden brown and the loaf shrinks slightly away from the sides of the pan. Let cool 10 minutes before removing from the pan.

Mexicali Cornbread

I got this little cornbread pan at the outlet mall recently on a clearance rack. I like it because each piece of cornbread gets its own crispy crust.

Mexicali Cornbread

2 cups cornmeal
3/4 cup flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 small can chopped green chilies
1 cup sour cream
1 (17-oz) can cream-style corn
2/3 cup oil
3 eggs
1 cup cheese, grated

Mix all dry ingredients. Mix eggs, oil, sour cream, corn, chilies, and cheese until blended. Pour into a greased 9 x 13 pan. Bake at 450 for 30 minutes. (I made this small pan and a 9 inch square pan with the batter, baked at 400 for 25 minutes).

Biscuits

My mom was the biscuit queen. She literally made her biscuits by pouring self-rising flour onto an opened sheet of newspaper -- no measuring -- and then making a hole in the middle and pouring buttermilk in the center and kneading it until it 'felt right' She would pat that down and cut the biscuits (with an emptied tomato sauce can) and place on a cookie sheet that she had melted Crisco. This morning I had buttermilk left over from making the pound cake so I decided to make a few biscuits. I was out of self-rising flour so I did an equivalent (1 cup flour + 1 teaspoon baking powder + 1/2 teaspoon salt).


For THE VERY BEST BUTTERMILK BISCUITS I use the following recipe. This truly makes the best biscuits ever.

6 cups flour
1 cup (2 sticks) butter cut into small pieces
3 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon sugar
6 teaspoons baking powder
1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3 to 4 cups of buttermilk

Mix the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and baking soda together. Cut in the butter with a pastry blender until it resembles coarse meal. Add the buttermilk until it is quite wet. Pour onto a well floured surface and incorporate some flour until it is no longer sticky, making sure not to handle too much. Roll or pat out until about 1 inch thick. Cut out biscuits and place on a 9 x 13 cookie sheet that has been well oiled. Bake at 425 degrees for 15-20 minutes until light golden brown. Remove from oven and brush with butter.