whole wheat biscuits

Before the flurry of holiday activity begins (or if you are just more organized than I am and have everything all sewn up), take a breather and relax. I made these whole wheat biscuits yesterday morning and they were perfect with coffee and a slather of butter and a dollop of cherry jam. However, they'd be equally wonderful served alongside soup or topped with sausage gravy and a poached egg.

Made with whole wheat flour and wheat germ, they are wholesome and nutty, light even. The rise on these however is not high, but these are not leaden lumps of dough by any means. I found the recipe on The Oyster Evangelist and Joy calls for them to be made in a cast iron skillet. Most of the biscuits managed to fit into the pan, but the leftovers I just baked on a cookie sheet and I couldn't tell the difference between the two.

whole wheat biscuits
(recipe adapted from The Oyster Evangelist)
1 1/2 c whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 c wheat germ
2 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t kosher salt
6 T unsalted butter, cold
1/2 c yogurt
1/2 c milk

Preheat oven to 450F with a cast iron skillet inside the oven.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, wheat germ, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together. Add in small cubes of cold butter and use your fingers to work through the mixture until you have pea-sized lumps of dough. In a measuring cup, whisk together the yogurt and milk and add it to the flour mixture, using a wooden spoon to stir it all up into a sticky mass of dough.

Transfer the dough to a floured surface, dusting additional flour over top and flatten with your hands until it's about an inch thick. Use biscuit cutters to cut out rounds, shaping out any leftover dough into discs and placing them on the hot cast iron skillet (or use a regular old cookie sheet). Bake for 15-20 minutes until the edges are dark.

apple cinnamon biscuits

Wake up to these babies. They are light, fluffy and perfect - and chock full of apples and spice. They taste like autumn, especially when eaten with an apple-cranberry-rosemary sauce. Or apple butter. Or smeared with cherry jam. Even plain, these biscuits are the bomb. Get the hot little recipe over at Poppytalk.

dill, red onion & cheese drop biscuits

There are a few dishes that I make over and over again. The ones requiring a recipe are taped to the side of my fridge. The list includes bannock, Molly's scones, chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and now there's this biscuit. I originally spotted the recipe on Bread & Honey and since then, I've made it countless times, always varying ingredients and so far, I've never been led astray. And it's versatile....it was a vegan recipe from the book How It All Vegan!that can be easily tweaked for dairy (like I have done below). They're good, easy and perfect as a side with soup or delicious spit open and topped with a poached egg.

dill, red onion & cheese drop biscuits
(adapted from Bread & Honey)
2 cs flour
2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1/4 c red onions, finely diced
1 T dried dill
a hearty grind of black pepper
a large handful of old cheddar cheese
2 T vegetable oil
1 c buttermilk or milk with 1 T vinegar or yogurt with a bit of milk mixed in

Preheat oven to 450F. In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, red onions, dill, black pepper and cheese. Stir in the milk and oil and mix lightly until combined. Using a tablespoon, drop blobs of dough on a parchment covered or silpat lined cookie sheet. Bake for 12 - 14 minutes or until lightly golden. Makes about 6 - 9 biscuits.

package cookies: ANZAC biscuits

My best friend lives in Durham, NC which makes dropping off cookies a bit more difficult. When she lived around the corner from me in Vancouver it was real easy to do so many things, but through the years we've managed nicely, I think. She's a good friend and her holiday package to me was chock full of good stuff, including a few things that would be pretty difficult for a Canadian to find...like a can of boiled peanuts, a bag of grits and the holiest of all flours, the very Southern White Lily. Yes, my friend knows me well.

When it came time for me finally send off my uber-late holiday box to her, there was still a bit of room in the package and I wanted to fill it with some baking. After spotting the recipe for ANZAC biscuits, I decided that this would be the biscuit that would make the trip over the border to North Carolina. These cookies are made for traveling long distances since they were baked up by loved ones of the Australian New Zealand Army Corps and sent off to soliders fighting abroad. Traditionally, these are made with golden syrup, but since I didn't have any on hand, I decided to sub in honey instead which is a very acceptable substitute.

Besides the little history lesson, how are these easy to whip up cookies? They're good, but honestly, they're not my favorite. I love coconut and oats but I felt that they were missing something. They are sturdy and hearty and not overly sweet which are all good things in my book, but I couldn't put a finger on what was missing. Maybe next time a bit of lemon zest would make these cookies sing or a splash of vanilla or almond extract to round out the flavour. Yeah, that's probably it! As is, it definitely makes a good breakfast cookie with a cup of hot coffee. However, that's just my opinion. They are an eggless cookie, so that's always a nice find. Easy to make vegan too by replacing the butter with a vegan margarine and the honey with agave nectar. My husband liked these cookies a whole lot and they reminded him of cookies his grandmother used to make, and grandma's cookies are never a bad thing!

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's about the Bloggies again. I really would love to win, so please tackle the very unruly sideways scroll bar and vote for me as Best Canadian Weblog. While you're there, vote for a few other favorites (I'm in very good company). Remember, voting ends February 2nd!

anzac biscuits
(recipe adapted from Martha Stewart)
2 c all-purpose flour
2 cs rolled oats
1 3/4 c sugar
1 c sweetened flaked coconut
1 c (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1/2 t salt
2 T honey
3/4 t baking soda
1/4 c boiling water

1. Preheat the oven to 350 and line cookie sheets with parchment or silpat. In a large bowl combine flour, oats, sugar, salt and coconut. Set aside.

2. In a medium size pot, melt butter and honey together. In a measuring cup, dissolve the baking soda in the hot water and pour into the butter mixture. ..be careful as the baking soda will foam up. Stir well and pour into flour and oats mixture.

3. Use a tablespoon to gather the dough to form a ball with your hands. This mixture is very crumbly, so roll tightly! Press the dough with the palm of your hand to flatten slightly. Bake for 13-15 minutes or until golden brown. Transfer to wire racks to cool. Makes about 18 cookies.

i have reached biscuit nirvana: feather-light drop biscuits

I'm back from my bike travels and it was a good trip. No disasters, no road rash, just calm country island roads. There wasn't as much bike-riding as in our past rides, but it was leisurely and it was nice to be camping and enjoy time away from the computer. We went only on 2 of the Islands, Lopez and San Juan, which were very bike-friendly with lots of rolling hills and wide shoulders to ride on. All in all, I wasn't too keen on the small bit of the San Juans that we saw, I much prefer the hippy/laid-back vibes of the Canadian Gulf Islands. Oh well, I got to try Hawaiian shaved ice for the first time and now I've got to find some of that icy magic here in Vancouver.

I've been dreaming about the perfect biscuit for a long time. My very first try was a disaster and the results ended up in the trash bin. I then tried this recipe which worked well for me...easy to whip up, vegan-friendly and tasty. And while my biscuit making chops were satisfied at the time, I decided to venture out and try a new kind of biscuit: the winsome drop biscuit. Oh. My. What took me so long?

This recipe comes via Yum Sugar who used a Cooks Illustrated recipe and it does not disappoint. These are even easier to make since they don't require any fussy rolling or cutting. Just drop that slovenly blob of dough onto the cookie sheet and you are gravy (oh, gravy!). Enjoy.

feather-light drop biscuits
(Cooks Illustrated recipe)
2 c all-purpose flour
2 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1 t sugar
3/4 t kosher salt
1 c cold buttermilk
8 T unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly

1. Preheat oven to 475. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the first 5 ingredients. Set aside.

2. In a smaller bowl, mix together the buttermilk and melted butter. Apparently it should look like this (scroll down to #4), but mine never got to that stage. No worries if you don't get lumps, because my biscuits rocked and so will yours. Using a rubber spatula, add the wet ingredients to the dry, stirring until the mixture begins to pull away from the bowl. Don't over mix!

3. Drop spoonfuls of dough onto a silpat (or parchment covered) cookie sheet, about 1.5 inches apart. Bake for 12-14 minutes or until tops are golden. Serve fresh from the oven. Lovely smeared with butter or jam.

a plain jane: buttery raisin biscuits

I've been swamped with work so it's been nothing but crickets around here from my end. I haven't had much to write about really, as all the cooking that I've been doing has involved just emptying out all the bits n' bobbins from my pantry. It's tasty, in a gotta-do-it kind of way, but not all that exciting.

Yesterday I did celebrate one small work milestone with a bit of baking. After some website mockups that I had sent to a client were approved, I figured that a bit of celebratory baking was required. The thing was, I still had loads of other work to complete, so the prep and baking had to be quick so that I could get right back into the swing of things work-wise. Lucky me, I had just finished reading this post on Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once. The photo reminded me of my favorite bakery item: the eccles cake. I know that some people are all about chocolate or a macaron or a cupcake. But for me, if I spot an eccles cake, it's mine. It's not the prettiest or the sweetest thing on the shelf...in fact, it's just a little bit dowdy and plain Jane. But I know that what it lacks in beauty, it makes up for in taste. Buttery, crispy and chewy all at once, and studded with lemony currants, it's my idea of bakery perfection. Take that you starry-eyed cupcake!

So getting back to the real star of this post, the buttery raisin biscuit. Now, I'm calling these a biscuit in the way the British refer to cookies. These are not to be confused with the Southern-style biscuits dripping with gravy or clotted cream. Nope, these are a bar cookie of sorts or something akin to shortbread. I made the recipe as directed, except I used plain ol' raisins instead of fancy currants and added a bit of lemon zest just to remind me of those eccles cakes. I started preparing the recipe, weighing the ingredients at the top of the hour and by half past, the biscuit was on my kitchen table cooling. A 30 minute treat, indeed. I don't have a fluted tart pan, so I made do with my small 7 inch springform cake pan that worked just fine. When I cut into the biscuit, it didn't have the crunch I was after, but it did have a good texture that was somewhere between a dense brownie and a scone. Next time (and oh, there will be a next time), I will bake it a bit longer for a bit more bite. This recipe only makes a small batch of biscuits as I was able to cut 8 wedges and after they disappeared, I wanted more. So go ahead and make a double-batch!

buttery raisin biscuits
120 g ap flour
90 g cold butter, cut into cubes
50 g white sugar
120 g raisins
zest from 1 lemon
1 egg, lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium sized bowl, combine flour and butter. Get it all crumbly using your fingers until it resembles coarse meal. Add in sugar and stir with a wooden spoon until combined; add raisins and zest, stirring gently until evenly distributed. At this point, the mixture will still resemble coarse meal. Slowly add in a little bit of the egg and stir until a soft dough forms. You don't want a dough that is too sticky. I used only half of an extra large egg, but I could have used a bit less.

Pat dough into a tart pan or a small springform cake pan. Make sure to get even coverage and then use the remaining egg to brush the top of the dough. Bake for 20 minutes or until the tops and edges are golden.

(recipe adapted from Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once)