Verity

Last year, I beta read Code Name Verity. I was obsessed. I am still obsessed. It's fantatsic, and when it comes out, everyone should read it. I am dreadful about giving a proper description, but it's about two young women, a spy an a pilot in WWII. I went as the spy for Halloween last year.

The orange sweater is nearly a character in its own right in the book, and I became obsessed with the idea of knitting it, and I don't even wear orange. It was super fast knitting, despite knitting with sockweight yarn and fairly small needles. (I think they were 4s. I appear to have forgotten, and didn't keep track in Ravelry.)

There was rather a ridiculous amount of detail that went into things. I spent days running about trying to find stockings with seams before giving up and painting stockings on with foundation and eyeliner. (How ridiculously period appropriate.)

I bought the skirt, unlike the other person who has assembled this outfit. Two friends make fake early 40's francs, carte d'idenite, and a ration book. The lipstick has "code" written in it, and there was more code on my hand, which I have taken offline as it was a bit spoilery. The painted fingernails are entirely in character.

The sweater pattern came from The Vintage Knitting Lady, it is genuinely old. I went with Bestway 1605; I knit long sleeves and the crew neck. Figuring out the pattern was easy, I love knitting both cables and lace, and it was pretty. Finding the right shade of orange was harder, and I nearly went Eidos Aster (I would have called the sweater The Form of Truth, then, because it really would be irresistible), which I still think is lovely, but it cost rather a lot of money, and in the end I went with Knit Picks Palette in Salsa Heather. Salsa Heather is lovely, it looks like orange from far away, but up close, you can see that it's actually made by spinning yellow threads and red threads together. The pattern has only one size, amazingly, and I made it fit me.

English Muffins

I love English muffins, and all sorts of breakfast toast things. I found a recipe on the internet, and got obsessed with the idea. I was intimidated by the idea of getting special crumpet rings, what if it didn't work. And then I stumbled on someone's suggestion online of using the rings for canning jam. Easy to find, easy to do something else with if you don't like making English muffins or crumpets (crumpets are also on my list of things to figure out making.)

I mixed up the dough, and then let it sit out to rise and did other things around the kitchen, like dishes. Like pancakes, do one first, to make sure the frying pan is the right temperature. Lightly grease the frying pan and pour cornmeal all over the place. (I used polenta, because that is all I had. It works fine.) Place the jar rings in the pot, and scoop batter in. The batter is very glutenous, stringy and stuck together. I put about one ice cream scoop worth of stuff inside.

If you have the rings greased well enough, when you flip the muffins, the rings will come off in your tongs. That's fine; you can be done with the rings. They should be cooked with a lid over the frying pan, to keep the heat in. When they're well cooked, put them in the oven, to ensure that they're cooked all the way through.

 

 Serve them warm. Split with a fork. Slather with butter, with jam, or experiment with Biscoff Spread. (Biscoff Spread is totally weird and delicious, it tastes like a cookie spread over your English muffin.) Mine were a little denser than store bought, and they didn't have quite as many holes, but they were still delicious.

English Muffins

Adapted from Alton Brown

makes 10-12 English muffins

Ingredients 1
1 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp butter
1 tsp salt
1/2 c milk
1/2 c water

Ingredients 2
1 envelope of yeast (or 1 1/2 tsp, if you're like me and don't buy yeast in packets)
1/8 tsp sugar
1/3 c warm water

Ingredients 3
2 c flour


Microwave the water, milk, and butter for Ingredients 1. Add sugar and salt, stir until dissolved. Let cool. Meanwhile, mix together Ingredients 2, stir until the yeast is dissolved. Mix 1 and 2 together, and add flour.

Let rise at least 30 minutes.

While frying pan is preheating, grease jar lids.

Grease the frying pan, pour on corn meal. Put down the jar lids, with the flat part on top, like the top of the jar. Pour put the batter into rings, using an ice cream scoop. Cover frying pan with lid, and cook five minutes. Pick up the rings with tongs to flip, if the ring comes up, use a spatula to flip like a pancake. Cover, cook another five minutes. When the outside looks thoroughly cooked, take out of frying pan and put in oven at 300.

Apple Crisp

We keep getting apples in our farm share, and we keep forgetting to use them. And then it was cold and grey and there were buckets of rain, so I made apple crisp.

 

Those aren't all of our apples, and it turns out that five was the perfect number of apples, not seven. So we still have lots of apples, but now we have slightly less. (Seven apples might have been the right number, if I had been using a slightly larger pan.)

I largely made up the apple crisp recipe as I went, but I did measure everything, and kept track of it.  made a few calls to my mom, who has spent the past two falls living among apple trees and making lots of apple crisp with all the apples, and then I added things all on my own. Like fresh grated ginger, which makes it even more warming and delicious. The best part, of course, is the crumble on the top, all oat and butter and sugar and cinnamon and ginger (and some flour, to help make it all stick together). There is rather a ridiculous amount of butter in this recipe, it's not really healthy at all.

 

Like the oat mixture, there's cinnamon and ginger in the apples. There's also lemon juice and maple syrup and apple jack liquor. Stirred altogether and then poured in a greased pan and covered with topping.

 

Bake it. The butter should melt and the juices from the apples and maple syrup should soften up the oats. But if there are bits of oat that don't get wet and juicy, melt more butter, and pour it on. It's best warm with vanilla ice cream, or whipped cream. It's tasty without, too.

Apple Crisp

5 apples

1/2 c maple syrup

dash of apple jack

juice of one lemon

generous dash of cinnamon

grated ginger to taste

1 stick salted butter, frozen

1/2 c flour

2 c oats

1 c raw sugar

generous dash of cinnamon

grated ginger to taste

Cut, core, and peel the apples. I cut them into quarters, and then cut the quareters into sixths or eights, depending. Toss with cinnamon, lemon juice, ginger, and applejack.

Cut the stick of butter into the flour, until the flour is full of super small bits of butter. Add the oats, sugar, cinnamon, and ginger. Toss.

Pour the apples into a greased baking dish. Cover with the oat topping. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes, or until crispy and brown.

Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies with Chai Filling

It is fall. I love fall. But, when fall comes, out come all the pumpkin treats. Pumpkin and cinnamon and nutmeg, oh my. Pumpkin lattes are one of the perks of fall. They work to cancel out the ragweed (they don't succeed, but they help). It's still too early to be making pumpkin pies, but after I had the chai frosting idea, combining it with pumpkin seemed perfect. And I am from Pennsylvania, the home of the whoopie pie, and so...whoopie pies. I love my whoopie pie cookbook. It has traditional whoopie pies, and then intriguing things like pistachio cardamom whoopie pies with rosewater filling (Persian whoopie pies! They are on my list of things to make at some point.)



Usually, when I'm doing pumpkin things, I start with a pumpkin and roast it. Which is delicious, and much easier than peeling and boiling down a pumpkin. I make killer pumpkin pie. I have made delicious pumpkin cheesecake. But for these, I went super easy, and used canned pumpkin. And I added clove, because I thought, correctly, that it would be delicious. Also, I cheat. The written recipe said to sift things together, and if I'm not making angel food cake, I don't sift.





Delicious. The intention was to make "traditional marshmallow filling" and add Trader Joe's chai powder. And then I realized that I didn't have nearly as much crisco as the recipe called for (I have no idea what happened to the crisco, I don't usually use it), so I cut in unsalted butter. It turned out to be fine, unsalted butter has less flavor than salted butter, I suppose, so that wasn't a problem. And then we tasted, threw in the rest of the marshmallow fluff, some more sugar, and more chai powder. This is the kind of frosting that just being in the kitchen with it gives you a sugar rush. But, if you are really craving sugar, open faced whoopie pies are insanely delicious. Mostly, I turned them into sandwiches, but two of us wanted open faced, and there was enough frosting to do it, so we did.

Pumpkin Whoopie Pie
adapted from Whoopie Pies
2 1/4 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 Tbp ground cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground allspice
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1 c brown sugar
1/2 c butter, at room temperature (I use salted butter for just about everything)
1 1/2 c pumpkin -- this is slightly less than a can. I wound up throwing out the rest of the can.
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla

Beat togethr brown sugar and butter. Add pumpkin, egg, and vanilla. Continue to beat. Slowly add the dry ingredients, and mix just until it's combined.

Put on baking sheets lined in parchment paper.  A little bit goes a long way; I meant to make tiny whoopie pies and accidentally made full sized cookies by using two heaping tablespoons.

Bake at 350. For full sized cakes, bake to firm. For full sized cakes, bake for 15 minutes, adjust for size.

Chai Marshmallow Frosting
adapted from Whoopie Pies
1/4 c Crisco
1/4 c unsalted butter (room temperature)
3/4 c confectioners sugar
7 oz jar of marshmallow cream/cream/whatever (my preference is for Kraft's Jet Puffed Marshmallow Cream, and I stock up on it when I leave the Boston area)
2 generous scoops Trader Joe's chai powder
generous dollop of vanilla extract

Beat all ingredients until mixed and fluffy. Taste, add more chai if needed.

After the cakes are cool, put a dollop of frosting on one side of half the cakes. I like to pair up the cakes by size before I start sandwiching things, because otherwise I will end up with the biggest cake and the smallest cake at the end and who knows what to do. And, don't close them up until there's no more frosting, in case there's extra to add off to all the sandwiches.

Lemon Ginger Marshmallows

Lemon Ginger Marshmallows

I do realize I've been away from the blog forever. I moved and misplaced my camera and the I found my camera and I lost my card reader. I actually made the lemon ginger marshmallows back in July or August, and certainly lemon and ginger are more summer flavors than fall. But they were delicious, and they need to be shared.


Homemade marshmallows are an entirely different sort of beast than store-bought marshmallows the first time I ever made marshmallows I went with traditional vanilla, and they tasted, I swear, like the way vanilla extract smells. (I am an adult. I should be able to remember that vanilla extract doesn't taste like it smells, but I forget constantly.)


In a pot, mix together lemon juice, lemon zest, ginger, sugar, and corn syrup. There are tricks for working without corn syrup, and sometimes I use them and sometimes I don't bother. This was a corn syrup batch.


While all that is cooking, there should be gelatin and more lemon juice in the bowl of the mixer. This "proofs the gelatin" or something, it softens up. Candy thermometers are key, and when it reaches the right temperature, add it to the gelatin. I don't know what happens if you don't cook it hot enough, but if it gets a too warm, it caramlizes too much and doesn't beat.


I love my Kitchen Aid. Love. My old roommate had a thing against kitchen gadgets and would do things like make angel food cakes and chocolate mousse with a whisk instead of using my mixer. This is not an option with marshmallows, really, because you beat them for like fifteen minutes. And it's hot. And you beat it on high. If you don't have a good mixer, I recommend not making marshmallows.


As it whips, it turns white and fluffy. It's like magic. It's tons of fun. It goes from yellow syrup to white clouds. When it is almost finished, turn down the speed, slowly add vanilla extract, and then turn it back up to high. If you don't turn the speed down, the vanilla will splash on you. (Ask me how I know!) Pour it in a pan, powdered with powdered sugar and let it sit out to dry. I usually start marshmallows at night, and finish it up in the morning.



Put more powdered sugar on a cutting board, and pull the marshmallow. Cut it up, into cubes, and roll in powdered sugar. Rolling it in powdered sugar keeps them from sticking to each other.


And voila. Delicious lemon ginger marshmallows. It's worth noting that these marshmallows do not roast. They just melt back into sugar. This is true for all of my marshmallows. Do not try to make them in brownies or on sweet potatoes (not that I would ever try such a thing.)

Lemon Ginger Marshmallows

3 packages unflavored gelatin
1 1/2 c regular white sugar
1 c light corn syrup
1/4 tsp salt
1 T vanilla extract
zest of at least two lemons
zested ginger root, to taste. I haven't overdone it on ginger yet.
confectioners sugar for dusting

Combine the gelatin and 1/2 c lemon juice in the bowl of an electric mixer. Let it sit while you cook the syrup.

Combine sugar, corn syrup, salt, lemon zest, ginger zest and 1/2 c lemon juice in a saucepan and cook on medium until the candy thermometer reads 240.

Set the mixer going slowly, and slowly pour the syrup into the gelatin. Once it has all been poured, gradually raise the speed to high. Beat on high until it is very thick and white, it takes about fifteen minutes. Turn down the speed, add the vanilla, and bring back up to speed.

Dust a pyrex 8x12 non-metal baking dish with confectioners sugar. Pour marshmallow into the pan, dust more. Let dry over night. Powder a cutting board with more powdered sugar, and cut. I use both a pizza rolling cutter and a paring knife. Roll in powdered sugar.

Coffee Toffee Ice Cream

After we ate all the large bits of toffee at a movie night, we were left with toffee crumbles. Delicious delicious toffee crumbles. And since one of my absolute favorite Ben and Jerry's flavors is coffee heath bar crunch, I decided to make my own. And I didn't like any of the coffee ice cream recipes I was finding online, so I made one up. I don't make up ice cream terribly often, but it worked out beautifully.

Before I left for work, I made cold brewed coffee. Cold brewed coffee is my favorite way to do coffee, it is designed to be drunk cold, so you don't have to chill for iced coffee, and it doesn't get bitter. Magic, I think. It takes a while to sit, I usually let it steep overnight, but my 8 hour work day amonts to the same thing.


I decided, basically, to replace the milk that goes in most ice cream recipes with coffee. So I heated it up, while beating eggs and sugar, and then I slowly poured the hot coffee into the eggs, beating the whole time. As one does for all custard things. (I seem to be on a custard kick lately, with ice cream and lemon curd.) Return it to the heat, and cook, stirring constantly, making sure to scrape the bottom of the pot to keep the eggs from scrambling. It won't quite coat the back of the spoon like it would if there were milk, but it comes close.



The other magic is the strainer. I love my strainer. It helps keep any scrambled egg bits you have out of the ice cream. I strained directly into a pitcher, pushing custard through the eggs. And then add cream.

After a delicious ice cream disaster over the weekend, I was feeling exceptionally paranoid about the ice cream freezing properly, so I actually prepared this a full day in advance of sticking it in the ice cream maker. I let it come to room temperature before putting it in the refrigerator. A coworker told me a tip for checking on the freezer bowl for your ice cream maker: if you shake it and hear no liquid, it's okay to go, otherwise, stick it back in the freezer. And stick it in the back of the freezer, not the front, where all the warm air comes.



Mix the ice cream as your ice cream maker instructs. I love my ice cream maker. When it's frozen, pour it in a container with half the add ins. Pour on the other half, and mix up. Freeze again until ready to eat. It is delicious.

Cold Brewed Coffee

1/3 c medium ground coffee
1 1/2 c water

Mix together, cover. Steep 8-12 hours. Strain once, quickly, and discard most of the large grounds. Strain a second time through a coffee filter (or a cheese cloth, if you are feeling environmental. I use a coffee filter.) If you are drinking this, it's generally recommended to add some more water. (This is how I make iced coffee in the morning.)

Coffee Toffee Ice Cream

Ingredients
1 c strong coffee (one batch of the above cold brewed coffee turns out perfectly)
4 eggs
3/4 c white sugar
2 c heavy cream
any leftover toffee or other add ins (malted milk balls would also be delicious)

Heat the coffee until it starts to steam. While the coffee is heating, beat the eggs and sugar. Slowly pour the hot coffee into the eggs, whisking constantly. Return to heat. Cook on medium until it coats the back of the heat-proof rubber spatula.

Strain into pitcher and mix in heavy cream. Chill overnight.

Freeze according to ice cream maker instructions. Put half of the mix ins at the bottom of the container you are moving the ice cream to, pour ice cream in, and add the rest of the mix ins. Mix all together and freeze until eating.

Milk Chocolate Macadamia Nut Toffee

Toffee is easy peasy, fun and delicious. It's a delicious addition to ice cream. This particular batch wound up softer and flakier than normal, someone said it was kind of like pralines. But, delicious anyway, and fantastic in coffee ice cream.


One of the tricks is to prep everything before putting anything on the stove. Once, I thought I will prep while it is cooking, and that is the story of the burnt toffee and the broken fancy pants electric candy thermometer that beeped at the right temperature (I dropped the whole thing in the sink, forgetting about the computer). Lay down your nuts, measure out vanilla extracts (and bourbon, if you have it), get out your chocolate chips. Stick butter, white and brown sugars, water, and a pinch of salt in a pan. Clamp on the candy thermometer. Start to boil. Do not stir.


The one and only prep thing that I will do while the sugar is cooking is mashing fleur de sel and cacao nibs in the mortar and pestle. The are a delicious addition. Finding cacao nibs at one of the local health food stores was so exciting.

When the temperature reaches 300 degrees exactly, turn off the heat, remove from the burner. Beat in baking soda and vanilla extract. Stir the whole time, when you add the liquid everything goes a little crazy. This takes two hands, and I have been working alone in the kitchen, so I have no pictures. Pour the toffee mixture over the nuts.


Pour chocolate chips over the toffee, and add the cacao nibs-fleur de sel mixture. Let it stand while the toffee hardens and the chocolate melts, for about five minutes. Spread the chocolate around, and pour the rest of the nuts on top. Let it sit overnight. Soak everything in soapy water, and it will be remarkably easy to clean.

In the morning, cut or break it apart. Even if it mushes, it will be delicious.

Milk Chocolate Macadamia Nut Toffee

I think I orginally started with David Lebowitz's toffee recipe, from The Perfect Scoop.

Ingredients
1 stick butter
1 cup white sugar
1/4 c brown sugar
2 Tablespoons water
generous pinch of salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 Tablespoons vanilla
about 8 ounces macadamia nuts, coarsely chopped
about 8 ounces milk chocolate chips
fleur de sel and cacao nibs (optional)

Put parchment paper on a cookie sheet, and spread out half the nuts. Measure out the vanilla and baking soda in small glasses.

Put butter, sugars, salt, and water in non-reactive pot. Clamp on candy thermometer. Cook to 300 degrees. Mix the butter through the sugars when it melts, and then do not stir. Mash the cacao nibs and fleur de sel, if using.

When candy thermometer reaches 300, remove from heat, and immediately beat in baking soda and vanilla. Be careful when adding the liquid.

Pour over the nuts, and immediately put down chocolate chips and nibs. Let stand a few minutes, spread out the chocolate, and pour down the rest of the nuts.

Let cool and solidify overnight. Break up, and share with your friends.

Lemon Lavender Curd

I am on a lemon curd kick. I bought a jar of it at Trader Joe's a few months ago for the first time in ages and I have been obsessed with it ever since. I mix it into Greek yogurt and calling it breakfast. It tastes like dessert. It is better than jam, tart and sweet and blending in so perfectly. Also, I became obsessed with the idea of mixing it with meringues, in some form. I wasn't remotely sure what that form was going to be. (In the end, it was macarons, which I will post about later.)

There are recipes that involve a candy thermometer, and recipes that use corn starch. This one does neither; the temperature is eyeballed and guessed at, and eggs do all the thickening. They are cooked eggs. (I hate working with cornstarch, and I avoid it as much as possible.)


I try to buy organic citrus if I'm using zest, and fortunately Trader Joe's had dirt cheap bags of organic lemons. I wash them off, too, before zesting. It's taken me a while to figure out how to make citrus curd that isn't painfully sour. I like sour, and it took me a while. I think my new microplane helps. It makes zesting so easy. I used four lemons, and most of the zest for all of them. Because I have 1/4 pound of culinary lavender buds (seriously. I ordered online and didn't really realize how much that was going to wind up being until it showed up) I decided to throw of those in as well. One of the wonderful things about making lemon curd is that it doesn't matter what is in there, so you juice the lemons straight in and don't worry about seeds. Or lavender flowers. You strain it all in the end. (This is the other trick that Ina Garten didn't teach me.)


Cook this all up until it bubbles a little. It doesn't take long, it's not that much lemon juice. While it's cooking, crack your eggs, and whisk in sugar. When it bubbles, slowly pour the hot lemon juice into the eggs, whisking the whole time. This takes two hands. Adding the hot lemon juice too quickly will just get you strings of scrambled eggs. The eggs need to cook slowly. Once it has all been whisked together, pour it back in the pot.


Stir constantly, using a heat proof rubber spatula. When it's mostly thickened up, add cubes of cold butter. Don't stop stirring. Never stop stirring. When it's ready, the curd will stick to the spatula.


Pour the curd through a mesh strainer into your prepared bowl. A strainer + cheese cloth is unneccessary, and it's almost impossible to get the curd through both. (Believe me, I have tried.) I am impatient, and I push the curd through, leaving behind long pieces of lemon zest, lemon seeds, and lavender flowers. This is the other trick to keeping the curd from going too crazy.



Let it cool some, and the pour it into a jar. I have no idea how long it stays good. Mine always disappears into stomachs long before it turns.

Lemon Lavender Curd

Ingredients
1/2 c lemon juice
zest from all the lemons
1/2 c sugar
3 eggs
1/4 c culinary lavender blossoms
6 T butter, cubed
pinch of salt (optional)

Zest the lemons and mix with lavender blossoms, juice and pinch of salt. Cook on medium low temperature until bubbling.

Meanwhile, whisk together the eggs and sugar.

Slowly pour the hot lemon juice into the egg mixture, whisking constantly.

Return everything to the pot. Stir with rubber spatula. Add cubes of butter.

When mixture sticks to the back of the plastic, it is done. Pour it through a mesh strainer. Let cool at room temperature. Put in jars, and refrigerate.

Print o' the Wave, Beginning

I cast of a giant ridiculous project on Sunday night, the peacock sweater I created and named Engel's Flaming Peacock. I need to pick up stitches and reinforce the collar, and add buttons, and it will its own proper blog entry. But tonight, while waiting for things to get out of the oven, and waiting for the washer to finish so I could put things in the dryer; I wanted something relatively easy, familiar, but just a little complicated. I didn't want to have to do the math for figuring out how many stitches I will need for the hood on my Pixie Hood, and it is too hot to really think about knitting with thick alpaca and silk for winter anyway.


I pulled out this lovely blue and purple skein of yarn I bought on impulse online, sight completely unseen from Posh, in one of their rare orphan sales. I think I bought it knowing the fiber content and nothing else. Its name is Chloe, the yarn that is, I haven't named the project. I trust them, they do beautiful yarn always, and this was no exception.


I sat and balled the yarn and debated patterns and watched TV and annoyed the poor dog by not paying any attention to him at all. I settled on knitting Eunny Jang's Print o' the Wave, for the third time. Familiar, simple lace, and lovely. It should go fast, since it is after all the third time I'm knitting it, and I am better now at picking up stitches than I was the first time I did this.

Biscuits for Breakfast

Food first thing in the morning usually turns my stomach. I usually pack yogurt with my lunch intending to eat it for breakfast, and then I eat it as a midafternoon snack. But on Sundays, I wake up and I want toast. I have been known to bake loaves of bread in desperation if I don't have any bread or reasonable bread facsimiles about (crumpets, English muffins, Trader Joe's frozen naan), but that tends to a lot of time. But biscuits are a perfect blend of speed and toast.


I got the recipe from my sister, and I think she got it from our stepgrandmother. I have been known to fail at biscuits and make things that turn out more like crackers than biscuits, tasty, but not light and flaky. The trick is to not overmix, and the trick to not overmixing is to be fairly sure that you are undermixing. Also, the food processor. Mixing the ingredients in the food processor is fantastic. I think part of the trick is to keep the butter away from your fingers as much as possible, it should do all the melting in the oven.
I never keep buttermilk in the house. I've only ever used it for biscuits, and I don't make them that often, so if I need it, I mix acid with milk. The trick is to add one tablespoon of acid (lemon juice or vinegar) to the bottom of your cup measure, and then fill it with milk. Let it sit for five minutes, and you have a fantastic buttermilk substitute. I usually use lemon juice, since I also tend to not keep white vinegar in the house. I tried once with balsamic vinegar, and you could taste it in the finished biscuits, totally disappointing with the cheddar cheese biscuits I was shooting for. While the milk is setting, pulse the dry ingredients to mix them in the food processor, set the oven to preheat, and cut the butter in cubes. Use cold butter, fresh out of the refrigerator, or even better out of the freezer.

Add the butter and the buttermilk to the dry ingredients and pulse only until it all holds together. Because, remember, the trick is to mix as little as possible. Dump out the mix onto a floured surface, and knead quickly (less than 30 seconds). Roll (or pat) to 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch thick.

After cutting up and putting them on a baking tray, butter the tops before baking. While the biscuits are in the oven, put the kettle on for tea, and do the dishes to keep your roommates happy. Remove from oven when golden brown.

Short Instructions

Yes, I did write out long detailed instrcutions, but I tend to write things up short instructions, especially for things I've cooked multiple times, that are more like guidelines. My notes look like this, and slightly more written out instructions are at the bottom.

Buttermilk Biscuits

This makes about ten 2 inch biscuits. For egg sandwiches, I would recommend making fewer, larger, biscuits.

Ingredients
2 c flour (sifted)
3 t b.powder
1/2 t salt
1/2 t b.soda
5 T cold butter, cubed
1 c buttermilk

Directions
Preheat oven to 450.

Mix dry ingredients. Pulse in butter cubes and buttermilk. Mix just until blended. Dump out on floured surface, and knead 30 seconds. Roll or pat to 1/2 - 3/4 inch thick. Cut up, and put on baking sheet. Place a small slice of cold butter (or butter with soft butter) on the each biscuit. Bake 12-15 minutes until golden brown.

Serve hot, with butter. Any other toppings, jam, honey, lemon curd, or nutella, as you wish. I tend towards straight up butter.