Category Archives: Recipes – Breads & Biscuits

Recipes - Breads & Biscuits

Pimento Cheese Biscuits

Geeze Louise, I meant to make and blog about these biscuits yesterday in honor of the Kentucky Derby but my “just do 3 hours of work in the yard” turned in to “it’s 5:30 and I haven’t made biscuits yet!” Determined to make up for the neglect yesterday, I baked these before I went out to the yard this afternoon. You might be tickled to find these tasty little treats on a Kentucky Derby buffet next year, even your own buffet table if you plan on hosting a Derby party (and what could be more fun?).

The recipe comes from a blog I enjoy reading, “Syrup & Biscuits” and though I followed the recipe exactly, I did not have 12 biscuits to bake after I was finished, only 7 biscuits.  Next time I will add more flour as I work the dough.  Today I also used a fresh jalapeno pepper, not a pickled one, and that was fine. I haven’t tasted these yet but they will be greatly enjoyed with my supper I know.  If you get 12 biscuits they will make a great appetizer for your Derby party or as a special side dish with a simple supper as I have planned.

The dough is very sticky so you will need to add enough flour for it to become smooth and elastic as you work with it.  I can imagine adding at least 1/2 cup additional flour as you roll it out.  I love the look of these with the cheese topping and the jalapeño slices.  The jalapeño gives just enough warmth to these pretty puffs and the pimento cheese is a great surprise when you bite into them.  Go on, put on your Derby hat, think about a cool mint julep, and have a Run for the Roses yourself!!

Ingredients

¾ cup soft winter wheat all-purpose flour
1 ¼ teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
¼ cup plain cornmeal
¼ cup unsalted butter, cubed and chilled
½ cup buttermilk
½ to ¾ cups pimento cheese
15 pickled jalapeño pepper slices

Directions: Place flour, baking powder, kosher salt and cornmeal in a bowl and stir lightly. Rub or cut in butter until flour resembles coarse meal.  Pour in buttermilk and stir until dough is wet and sticky. Turn out onto a well-floured surface. Sprinkle flour on top. Gently work in the flour, adding more as needed, until the dough is no longer sticky and holds its shape.  Roll out to ½ inch thick. Cut with a 2 inch biscuit cutter dipped in flour. With the back of your hand, flatten out the cut out biscuit as much as possible.

Spray a mini-muffin pan with non-stick spray. Place about a teaspoon of pimento cheese in the center of the biscuit cut out. Press the edges of the cut out toward the center to form a flower shape. Place the biscuit in a mini-muffin cup and top with a pickled jalapeño slice. Repeat with each biscuit cut out.  Place in a 450 degree oven for 12 minutes or until the cheese is melted and slightly brown and the biscuit is done.  Remove from oven and transfer each biscuit to a cooling rack for 5 minutes. Best served warm.

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Recipes - Breads & Biscuits

The BEST Raspberry Bread

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I wanted “something raspberry” with the small pack of berries I bought Thursday, and a quick late night Google search brought this recipe up immediately. I used it exactly as I found it on Averiecooks.com blog page except using less raspberries than called for and adding chopped pecans to the batter. Moist and dense, this sweet bread is just Plain ‘Ole Raspberry Perfection! Right here! Make it early in the day and let it mellow before slicing if you can wait. It’s only going to taste even better!

I used fresh berries as recommended; they are available now in my local market and frozen berries do produce extra juice, not needed here. It’s always so exciting spotting those first shelves of fresh berries in the produce aisle, and if I had 12-oz of berries I would definitely use them. Omit the nuts if you wish; I like them for the texture they bring and they make up for using less fruit. The batter is rich with buttermilk, oil, and melted butter; don’t over stir it; it is lumpy and shouldn’t be smooth. The fats added lightness to the batter and it slid right from the bowl under its own steam into the loaf pan. Those fats also guarantee a dense moist bread, bursting with flavorful tang of buttermilk and melted butter. The brown sugar casts a lovely golden color and adds sweetness.

I did bake the bread for 55 minutes today as it was still wet at 45 minutes. I turned the oven off then and let the bread sit in the oven 5 more minutes. It browned nicely and dropped easily from the pan after it cooling 20 minutes. A small knife run around the sides of the pan will loosen the bread perfectly and it drops right from the pan. Cool completely on wire rack with bread wrapped in lightly in foil. A dollop of Cool Whip on each slice will be extra good tonight!

I followed the directions as given but rewrote them using my words and my results today. I couldn’t agree more with Averie that this is the BEST raspberry bread around! At my house, today, at least! It won’t last until tomorrow because it was made for sharing, but if there are leftovers, wrap slices in foil and store in an airtight bag. This will be even better the next day, guaranteed! I have no idea what’s for supper but, with a glass of cold milk, following half a day of water sloshing all-out cleaning on the front porch, i found that two slices of this raspberry bread made a wonderful late lunch. Hey, now, it’s Spring! Get Raspberries! Be Delighted!

The BEST Raspberry Bread

Ingredients:

2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
pinch salt, optional and to taste
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 large egg
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup canola or vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
10 to 12 ounces raspberries, about 2 cups (today, 6 oz.)
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

Directions: Preheat oven to 350F. grease and flour a 9×5″ loaf pan; set aside.

In a large bowl, add the flour, the brown and white sugars, baking soda, and salt. Whisk to combine; set aside.

Melt the butter. Allow butter to cool slightly then add the egg, buttermilk, oil, vanilla. Whisk well.

Pour wet ingredients over the dry and stir until just combined; don’t over mix. Batter will be somewhat lumpy; don’t try to stir the lumps smooth or bread will be tough; set aside.

In a medium bowl, add raspberries and 2 tablespoons flour; toss lightly to combine. Add the floured raspberries to the batter nad fold in, along with the pecans, if using, very lightly to combine. Turn batter out into prepared pan, smoothing the top lightly with a spatula and distributing batter well in pan.

NOTE: Recipe recommends if using frozen berries, bake for 1 hr 17 minutes. Tent foil over the pan after 30 minutes. Today, using fresh berries, I baked it for 55 minutes, with foil tented over it at 30 minutes) then turned the oven off and let it sit for five more minutes. Test the batter after 45 minutes and adjust. Bread is done when the top springs back and a tooth pick inserted has no batter on it. Allow bread to cool in pan for 20 minutes before turning out on a wire rack to cool completely before slicing and serving.

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Recipes - Breads & Biscuits

Dell Ward’s Homemade Bread

When my sisters and I were growing up, we loved going to Ward’s Cafe with our parents to enjoy Mrs. Ward’s delectable dinners and wonderous desserts.  Mrs. Ward was well-known in our community for her  homemade dinner rolls, breads, tender flaky doughnuts, and her Wednesday night fried chicken dinners.   Her grandson, Tim Ward, graciously shared with me his Mamaw’s recipe for homemade bread for my “Missouri to Maui” cookbook and I wanted to share it with you today for it is hard to beat the aroma of fresh bread baking while anticipating then savoring that first bite.

Like many old recipes, Mrs. Ward’s recipe doesn’t specify the amount of flour to use but says only to initially “add flour until a spongy dough forms” and I used just under 2 cups at that step  then followed her recipe’s instructions to add “several” cups of flour to the yeast’s “spongy dough” mixture; I used another scant 2 cups of flour. You will have to experiment with the flour amount as you get a feel for adding enough to develop a smooth elastic dough. Today’s total of close to 4 cups produced a dough that was easy to knead and shape into two loaves.

The bread bakes up airy and light with a lightly browned crunchy crust.  You will have plenty of “in between time” while the bread rises; three times in all, and today I spent that time cleaning the yard. Wise then, to choose a day for baking this bread when you can keep yourself occupied productively in between trips to the kitchen; the waiting only increases the pleasure of bread baking! This bread today didn’t rise as high as I remember Mrs. Wards’ so I will let it rise even longer in the loaf pans next time, but, it tasted delicious and was  totally satisfactory “as is” today.  I slathered it with butter after cooling 15 minutes on a wire rack and ate two pieces standing up. =)

Mrs. Wards’s Homemade Bread

Ingredients

1 cup water
1 cup plus 2 tsp. milk
1/2 cup sugar
2 pkgs. rapid-rise yeast
Flour
1/2 cup oil
1 tsp. salt

Directions In saucepan, combine the water, milk and sugar. Heat to warm but not hot. Turn off heat and add the two packages of yeast. Stir to blend and let this sit until it bubbles slightly, about 5 minutes. Stir in enough flour so that the batter forms a spongy dough. Stir with a wire whisk to blend the warm mixture with the flour; cover with a paper towel; allow dough to double in size.

When dough has doubled, sift several cups of flour into a separate large bowl. Make a well in the center of the flour. Add the dough that has doubled in size to the dry flour mixture. Add the oil and salt. Fold into the flour and mix well. Turn out to a floured surface or Silpat baking mat and knead well. Grease a large bowl and place kneaded dough into it and allow to double in size again. When doubled, separate into loaves and place in greased loaf pans and allow to double in size one more time. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes until nicely browned on top.

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Recipes - Breads & Biscuits

Mrs. Rahm’s No Fail Hot Roll Mix

 

High school friends will remember this recipe from our Home Economics classes with Mrs. Rahm!  I found the recipe in one of my high school files, typed and “run off” on the old-style mimeograph machine (remember purple ink anyone?) and another cold winter day seemed the perfect time to make bread; there’s hardly a more mouth-watering aroma in the kitchen than fresh bread baking on a cold day is there?  No there is not, I agree!

Using my Silpat baking sheet was perfect for kneading the dough with no mess.  The recipe makes a large amount so today I shaped it into two different styles of rolls and also made a loaf.  This is a simple to follow recipe that shouldn’t give you any trouble at all.  The dough rises just once, after shaping, before baking.  6 cups of flour was just right for a supple elastic dough shaped and rising  in no time at all.

I couldn’t even wait for supper to enjoy a roll warm from the oven, slathered with butter and mango pepper jelly from my Florida mango jelly stash.  Simple perfection.   Enjoy!

Mrs. Rahm’s No Fail Hot Roll Mix

Ingredients

2 pkgs. dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water
2 tsp. sugar
6 T. sugar
1 tsp. salt
6 T. Crisco shortening, melted
1 cup milk
2 eggs, well-beaten
6 cups flour, sifted

Directions Preheat oven to 350. Add warm water to the dry yeast in medium bowl. Add the 2 tsp. sugar. Let rise until doubled. Add the 6 T. sugar, the salt and the melted shortening to the milk and scald in medium sauce pot on stove. Do not boil. Let milk mixture cool to lukewarm before adding to yeast mixture. Add the beaten eggs, mix well and gradually add the flour. Beat thoroughly after every flour addition; turn out on floured surface, knead well, and shape into rolls. Allow to rise in muffin tins before baking for 10-12 minutes or until rolls are nicely browned on top.

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Recipes - Breads & Biscuits

Sour Cream Cranberry Biscuits

These biscuits have been food whispering to me since I saw the post on my sister’s Facebook page months ago, and this afternoon, waiting on the snow fall, seemed a perfect day for biscuit baking. Nothing seems as comforting as mixing up a batch of biscuits and inhaling that warming aroma when it’s freezing outside; to me that spells winter baking at its best.

With crunchy tops and edges and a soft inside these are great “as is” or they would make fine appetizers using a smaller biscuit cutter.  I used my 2-1/2″ cutter today as I plan to slice them for supper for stuffing with pieces of fried country ham.  Sour cream and honey give them their softness and orange zest and cranberries a fruity tang.  Fresh cranberries weren’t an option today so I used dried and found they added just enough chewiness to balance the otherwise soft texture.  Do brush their tops with melted butter when they are still warm from the oven.

The dough is soft and sticky so flour your counter, your hands, and your rolling pin.  I cut the butter in with my fingers until it was well incorporated with the dry ingredients.  The dough doesn’t require much kneading before rolling out but you will have to dust it with flour several times until it becomes smooth and elastic.  18 minutes at 425 was just right for browned tops and bottoms. Still no snow fall but we DO have biscuits!

Sour Cream & Cranberry Biscuits

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
4 tablespoons butter, softened
2 teaspoons orange zest
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup honey
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup chopped fresh cranberries

Directions Preheat oven to 425. In medium bowl, whisk the flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder. Cut in the butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add orange zest, buttermilk, honey and sour cream. Sir well with wooden spoon to blend. Fold in the cranberries. Turn out onto a well-floured surface and add enough flour to enable kneading the dough then roll out to 1/2 inch thick. Cut with 2” biscuit cutter and place on sprayed baking sheet. Bake 15-20 minutes until nicely browned. Brush biscuit tops with melted butter. Yield: 14 biscuits.

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