Biscuits - Drop, Oil

This blog is really for EASY cooking - not fancy, but stuff Ryu gives the "umai" (delicious) vote to. These biscuits fit that role. I am not a biscuit maker. If you have read any of my other posts, you will perhaps remember that I do not like to cut shortening or butter into flour. I have a pastry cutter and CAN do it if necessary, but will go to great lengths NOT to do so. Also, big old cans of Crisco are not available to me and butter is too spendy for daily consumption. However, a student received many many bottles of oil for a mid-summer gift. She and her husband are not great oil consumers, so she gave me a bunch of them. I don't use oil in much of my regular cooking, but...free is FREE!

Then, I found this recipe for biscuits - using oil. And they are sufficient if you like drop biscuits. If you are dead set on cut out ones, don't try this recipe - though the original recipe says you can roll the dough out between pieces of wax paper - why try to do the impossible???

As this recipe is not the same as the one Betty Crocker has on her web site, I'll post it all here:

Baking Powder Biscuits - Drop, Oil

1 3/4 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup milk
1/3 cup oil

Heat oven to 450F or 230C. Mix dry ingredients together. Combine milk and oil and dump into the dry ingredients. Mix with a fork until all is moist. Avoid over-mixing. Using a spoon, drop the batter into a greased cookie sheet (I never grease mine.) Bake until golden brown. 10-12 minutes (cooking time depends on the size of your biscuits - so check on them.)

Source: Betty Crocker's Cookbook, New and Revised Edition, Copyright 1978. Baking Powder Biscuits page 194

In the original recipe, the oil is shortening and is cut into the flour mixture.

Bread Crumb Cobbler

Our family is more or, as was THIS day, LESS bilingual. On the "less" days, that seventh sense is really important. If someone is tired, this seventh sense is usually out of service and strange things happen.

I was on a bread baking binge this winter. Yes, it is now fall again. Months later, and finally this post is applicable! Finally! My husband KNEW I'd been baking bread. Our minuscule kitchen was covered in flour. He'd been EATING the bread! How could he not have understood me when I gave him the shopping list and asked for...

OK, let me back up a tiny bit and give you a tiny Japanese language lesson so you won't think I was totally crazy! We put the word "ko" before or after things/people/animals to make them small. Like "dog" is "inu". A puppy is..."ko inu." Pretty cool, huh? Many women's last names end in "ko" - like an endearative. (Was that English? Oh well.) In the kitchen we have items that have been ground up and are called "something something 'ko'". Like flour is "mugi ko."

Now, I suppose there are tons of different kinds of flour in the US too, but I never had to feed a family there so never thought about it. But, here the flour that I usually buy here is definitely NOT bread flour. And I needed bread flour. The word for bread is "pan". I asked Ryu to buy me a bag of "pan ko." Now, doesn't that make sense to MOST OF YOU OUT THERE? OK, I know some who speak Japanese are howling in their green tea, so I'll let the rest of you kind folk in on the joke.

Ryu came home with a HUGE bag of Bread Crumbs. Yep. And I KNEW this, of course, but...in the heat of the moment spaced right out - "pan ko" means ground up crumbled bread. Thus began the 1/2 year long search for ways to use up this huge bag of bread crumbs.

I always suspected that they could be used as a topping in dessert but never experimented to figure out how. Then, just yesterday evening - when I was FINALLY down to a mere 3/4 cup of bread crumbs, I ran across this recipe when I was drooling over individual pie slice pans. I made a 1/2 batch of it - see above at the mere 3/4 cup of bread crumbs remaining - and it was so so wonderful!

Let me tell you why it was wonderful. Cobbler is basically a fruit pie filling with no crust on the bottom and one of a few crusts on the top. The first common crust is a standard pie crust. My Grandma Mary used to make this. I couldn't understand why someone would go through the torture of cutting shortening into flour for a mere cobbler! My Mom (she'll surely correct me if I'm wrong), would make the drop biscuit type top crust for cobbler. This is fine if you can actually get the fruit done and the biscuits neither soggy or burnt. The third type of crust that I am familiar with is the oatmeal crust. Frankly it is usually too something. Too sweet, too...something.

So, that is why this crust is so wonderful. It is TRULY crunchy! It was way too sweet, but THAT can be changed in the twinkling of an eye. The recipe states that you can use prepackaged "panko," which I understand is on sale in most supermarkets in the US now, or that you could use fresh bread crumbs. You may be scratching your head at the oxymoron of fresh bread crumbs, but...my mother in law makes them when she makes pork cutlets. Grab your fresh bread and a cheese grater and give it a try! I think a "crunchy" bread with nuts and stuff in it would really add to this topping! Mom - why don't you try it and let me know?

English Muffins

What a baking frenzy evening we had last night! In our tiny kitchen, cookies and English Muffins at the same time. What a MESS! And, oh, so yummy!

I was inspired to try some yeast products this weekend by Heather and her crumpets, and Coffeegrl and her Artisan Bread. I hope to also make those crumpets, artisan bread as well as bagels! I've made bagels and crumpets before...in Japan...many many years ago. I look forward to trying them again. And, the artisan bread? We'll see if I can do it.

Along with the yeast products, I plan a batch of oatmeal banana chocolate chip cookies and a batch of scones 1/2 with candied dekopon, 1/2 with candied ginger with ginger sugar on top. Mmmm! I wonder how long my energy and frenzy will really last!

On to the English Muffins. I decided to try these because my crumpet recipe describes crumpets as kind of a non-turned over pancake or kind of like an English Muffin. And I thought - ENGLISH MUFFIN? I've never thought of making those. I found a few recipes, and chose this one because the picture looked so yummy! With one little change, we had great English Muffins for breakfast this morning. Ryu said, "They look like English Muffins!" Well, there you go!

ENGLISH MUFFINS

This recipe called for two beaten egg whites. HAHAHAHA! I don't own a mixer and beating egg whites must have a purpose greater than mixing them into bread with a ton of flour. So, I substituted those egg whites with a whole egg and that was that! Worked fine.

Here is another interesting recipe for English Muffins from Alton Brown at the Food Network (in terms of the cooking method). However, I don't have cooking rings or tin cans to use in their place, so...I did the cookie cutter method above. But, this recipe looks like it takes less time, so next time...I'll probably try it!

Peanut Butter Bread

As I mentioned on my other blog, I was flipping through an Amish cookbook and came across Peanut Butter Bread. Well! That sounded strange enough to me to give it a try. I looked on the internet to find a recipe that I could easily share with you all if I liked it, and was SHOCKED to find all the recipes for Peanut Butter Bread! Seriously! I had NEVER heard of it before. Then I heard from Abigail at Mamatouille - her cooking blog, and before reading my post she had been planning to try this "interesting recipe".... Peanut Bread.

I made the bread, and, truly, if it weren't for the raves from the peanut butter lovers around me and those who want to try the bread, I probably wouldn't post the recipe. With each bite I kept wanting chocolate spread or peanut butter cookies. Needless to say, I forgot to add a handful of chocolate chips like planned!

I choose the recipe from Jif Peanut Butter. I figured if it had to do with peanut butter, a recipe from a peanut butter company should be good. And, while My Mother never bought it, as a child the ads ALWAYS said "Choosy mothers choose Jif!"

So, here it is. If you try it, please let me know. It is supposed to be nice with chocolate spread, cream cheese, jam, etc. Straight butter did not do the trick, in my book!

Peanut Butter Bread

Scones a la Reiko-chan

Back in my single days, and I was living in a freezing apartment in Japan, a young Japanese woman, who was studying and living in the US at that time, came to stay with me for a couple of days. Her name is Reiko. For breakfast, she made me scones from a recipe she had learned from someone in the States. Unfortunately, my baking powder was past its raising age, and the scones came out quite...dense. However, I have kept and made this recipe Sooooo many times.

I got it out again this morning and made them with cinnamon chips. So yummy! Ryu was eating his silently. I kept oohing and ahhing over the scones and asking him what he thought. Finally he said, "Kim, when I am eating quietly, it means it is just too good for words." Well, there you have it!

Scones

1/2 cup butter (I used cake/stick margarine)

1 3/4 cup flour

3 Tbsp. sugar

2 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1 egg, beaten

4-6 Tbsp. milk (I used a combo of yogurt and water)

1/2 cup raisins **

1 egg, beaten (to brush on top of the scones)

Cut the butter into the dry ingredients. Combine the milk and egg, and stir in so the dough leaves the side of the bowl. Turn it out on a lightly floured surface and knead lightly 10 times. Roll or pat to a 1/2" thick circle. Cut into 6 wedges. Put on ungreased baking sheet, brush with egg, back at 450 F for 10-12 min.

Now, the way I did it! HAHAAHA! First, a friend who owns a cake shop makes scones (different recipe) and makes them into little balls. So, I tried it with this recipe, and it works wonderfully. I suspect it doesn't take the scones so long to bake, and you have more individual servings. This morning I ended up with 11 scone balls.

**I use raisins when I want. I have also used:

• cinnamon chips
• semi-sweet chocolate chips and crushed sea salt almonds!
• semi-sweet chocolate chips and pecans (upped br. sugar to 1/3 cup.)
• orange marmalade (no milk or raisins. Add 1/2 cup orange marmalade)

Dilly Casserole Bread

I should be a wonderful bread baker. Both of my grandmothers and my mom baked bread a lot. Unfortunately, I guess I wasn't around for the mixing, only the eating. So, while I know some of the basics, I have no confidence whatsoever in baking bread.

When I was a kid I helped Grandma Mary bake this no-knead bread. When she pulled the cottage cheese out of the fridge and heated it up on the stove, I thought she was crazy. And, what are dill seeds!!?!?!?!!

This is the first recipe in the yellow 25 Cent recipe pamphlet from Red Star Yeast titled Spring and Summer Fun with Yeast. Under the title of Dilly Casserole Bread is the phrase (Adapted by Ann Pillsbury). As the pamphlet is undated and I was curious, I looked around on the internet. It turns out that this recipe was the winner of the 1960 Pillsbury Bake-Off! Who knew?

Please click the link to get the recipe straight from Pillsbury's website!

Dilly Casserole Bread

NOTE: Cottage cheese is pretty spendy here and comes in tiny little containers, and is just ... different. So, I washed up Ryu's drip coffee pot, put a new filter in and filled it with plain yogurt. After draining it really well, I used it in place of the cottage cheese. Probably 1 1/2 cups of yogurt drains down to 1 cup. I'd let it sit longer than I did, so I recommend overnight - if your hubby or you don't NEED the coffee pot before then!

My Japanese friends thought the bread was "interesting". My husband begged me not to force him to finish his piece. I guess dill is an acquired taste. So, I am force feeding it to Jun. Just kidding. Kind of!

Cornbread!

We were in the States this spring, in a ranching community. I overheard a woman invite her father to dinner. He asked what was on the menu, and she said cornbread and beans. And I died from jealousy.

Oh, to be able to go to any old supermarket anywhere and buy a big box of cornmeal. Cornmeal muffins, cornmeal in pancakes, cornmeal in yeast bread. Anywhere except mush!

I went home to my folks and got out the big box of cornmeal and made the recipe below for muffins - but as cornbread. The nieces and nephews nearly finished it before dinner. So, I made a double batch the next time.

Here, I can buy a package of cornmeal at Isetan's supermarket. Close to, but not quite a cup, for somewhere in the neighborhood of $2. So, I picked up a package. I divide the cornmeal carefully into two batches, so each batch has a little less than the stated 1/2 cup, but...it is worth it! I just fill the 1/2 cup measure with extra flour.

The recipe is on the box of the Alber's box. If you can find cornmeal, I recommend it!

Sweet Cornmeal Muffins