Category: Food & Cooking

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Biscuits with Fruit Compote

Berry Cobbler featuring a mix of tired blueberries and raspberries. WOW! This biscuit is great!

It is recommended you eat more fresh fruit and veggies as part of a defense against the virus. That is all well and good, but what is fresh about a stay-at-home scenario?

In these times, going to the grocery store has been reduced to a once in a month activity. This requires suiting up before you go, sanitizing along the way, and disinfecting upon return.

Perfect for breakfast, second breakfast and tea … okay, delicious anytime of the day.

The few remaining apples we got on the last supply run are starting to show their age. Grocery re-stock is a week off. So, I core, peel and slice the apples, cover with some sugar and cinnamon do a light saute and serve them with a biscuit.

These aren’t just any biscuits. These morsels came as part of a cobbler recipe. We’ve found that you don’t need berry cobbler to enjoy a really tasty treat. It’s kind of healthy … and they are delicious slathered with butter and jam.

Print Recipe

Blueberry Cobbler

Ingredients

filling

  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 Tbsp corn starch
  • pinch cinnamon
  • pinch salt
  • 6 cups berries
  • 1 1/2 tsp lemon zest
  • 1 Tbsp lemon juice

Biscuit topping

  • 1 cup unbleached AP flour
  • 2 Tbsp stone-ground cornmeal
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp baking soda
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 4 Tbsp unsalted butter melted
  • 1/3 cup buttermilk
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla
  • 1/8 tsp cinnamon
  • 2 tsp sugar

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 375º and adjust rack to lower-middle.

Filling

  • Stir the sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, and salt together in a large bowl. Add the berries and mix gently with a rubber spatual until evenly coated; add the lemon zest and juice and mix to combine. Transfer the berry mixture to a 9- inch glass pie plate (8-inch square works too). Place on a rimmed baking sheet, and bake until the filling is hot and bubbling around the edges, about 25 minutes.

Biscuit

  • Whisk the flour, cornmeal, ¼ cup of sugar, baking powder, soda and salt in a large bowl to combine. Whisk the melted butter, buttermilk, and vanilla together in a small bowl. Mix the remaining 2 tsps sugar and cinnamon in a second small bowl and set aside. One minute before the berries come out of the oven, add the wet to dry ingredients; stir with a rubber spatula until just combined and no dry pockets remain.

Assemble and Bake

  • Remove the berries from the oven. Increase the temp. to 425º. Pinch off 8 equal pieces of biscuit dough and place them on top of the hot berry filling, spacing them at least ½ inches apart. Sprinkle each mound of dough with cinnamon sugar. Bake until the filling is bubbling and the biscuits are golden brown on top and cooked through, 15 to 18 minutes. Cool the cobbler on a wire rack for 20 minutes and serve.
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A Peanut Butter Cookie

If you don’t like peanut butter … well that’s just wrong … but also you won’t like this post much either.

We’ve long been fans of Alton Brown and “Good Eats” … even saw his stage show in PDX a few years ago.

Brown’s take on cooking and food is unique and always entertaining. Check out his YouTube channel.

As the days at home stretch out, you might be looking for a treat and this recipe has five ingredients, is quick, flourless and full of peanut goodness. Enjoy!

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Alton Brown's Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies

Ingredients

  • 268 g smooth peanut butter
  • 120 g brown sugar
  • 120 g white sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp soda
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1/4 tsp salt

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 350º and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
  • Cream peanut butter together with sugar(s) until fully incorporated.
  • Add egg, soda, vanilla, and salt. Beat until smooth.
  • With a 1 ½ Tbsp scoop (1 oz), measure and transfer balls of dough to cookie sheet. Leave 2 to 3 inches of space - that is 8 dough balls on each sheet.

With a fork press to flatten the balls and then slide the fork off, first in one direction and then 90º to those indents to create the classic cross hatch pattern.

  • Place both sheets roughly in center of oven and bake for 5 minutes. Turn the pans and bake an additional 5 minutes (10 minutes total).

Cool on sheets for 5 minutes and transfer to racks. Allow to cool completely before storing in cookie jar.

    Notes

    Here is the YouTube video with Alton making these cookies.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nalyEGpuSs&t=0s
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    If Not Cake?

    When you start to write a post about cheesecake, the first thing to do is research this tasty dessert.

    Further study reveals a startling fact … 

    Cheesecake is NOT cake!

    We’re crazy for that graham cracker crust.
    So is it pie? Round, custard filling with crumb crust …
    sounds like pie.

     

    *”Despite the confusing terminology, cheesecake is by no means a cake. Also, since cheesecake isn’t topped with pastry, it cannot be a pie. Cheesecake is, and forever will be, a tart”*.

    Our baking experiments continue with these little guys. We tried three sizes and found we liked this small cupcake shape. The ratio between graham cracker crumb to cheese filling was great!

    An early form of cheesecake was served to Olympians in 776 B.C. But it didn’t resemble what we now think of as cheesecake. Romans took the “recipe’ from the Greeks, made some changes, but all of these early forms of the dessert used a Ricotta-style cheese.

    Immigrants brought it to America.  In the late eighteen hundreds a Philadelphia Dairy man invented cream cheese which found its way into what is now commonly called the new york style cheesecake.  This is what most think of when we say cheesecake.

    It may not be cake, or pie, or a tart, but we can agree . . . it is a great dessert.

    Print Recipe

    Mini Cheesecake

    These little cheesecakes are baked in a muffin pan just like cupcakes.
    Servings: 16

    Ingredients

    CRUST

    • 6 graham crackers, broken into pieces We used cinnamon graham crackers.
    • 2 tsps sugar
    • 3 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
    • 1 pinch salt

    FILLING

    • Two 8 oz pkg cream cheese, at room temperature
    • 2/3 cup sugar
    • 1/4 cup sour cream
    • 1 tsp vanilla extract
    • 2 large eggs
    • 1 tbsp flour

    Instructions

    Prep

    • Preheat oven to 325. Line 16 cups (of two muffin pans).

    To make crust

    • In bowl of food processor process the graham crackers to fine crumbs. You should have 2/3 cup.
    • Pour crumbs into bowl and add sugar, melted butter, and salt.
    • Use a fork and stir until crumbs are evenly moistened.
    • Divide mixture evenly among the prepared muffin cups (about 1 tablespoon per cup).
    • Press crumbs into bottom of cup.
    • Bake until lightly golden, about 4 minutes. Set on wire racks.

    To make filling

    • In a clean food processor bowl, process the cream cheese until smooth, about 3 minutes.
    • Add the sugar until smooth, about 30 seconds. Scrape down the bowl.
    • Add the sour cream and vanilla until combined.
    • Add the eggs one at a time, processing well after each addition.
    • Add the flour and process until combined. Scrape down the bowl and process one more time.
    • Divide the filling evenly among the prepared muffin cups, filling each three-fourths full.
    • Bake until the cheesecakes puff and are set, about 23 minutes. Let cool completely in the pans.
    • Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until chilled, at least 3 hours or up to overnight.
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    A GREAT Pub … just a bit out of the way

    Mitchell, Oregon is roughly halfway between Portland and the Oregon / Idaho border. Sitting on the south edge of Highway 26 there are few reasons for you to do much more than just drive past the sleepy little town.

    However, Painted Hills unit is just a few miles east and we venture to that spot 3 or 4 times a year. JQ pointed out the existence of a brew pub, but I was reasonably skeptical of the pours it might offer.

    Turns out I was mistaken. Tiger Town Brewing offers a great selection of house brews, a guest tap and an amazing assortment of high end whiskey. Who’d of thunk.

    We chose a couple of glasses of different ales and a ‘dram’ of Weller’s. Then, from their adjoining food cart we shared a basket of delicious fish and chips. The menu offered a nice variety of pub fare. Tiger Town may be a bit of a drive but if you ever find your self on Hwy 26 in Central Oregon this is a definite must stop.

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    Orange Poundcake

    While scoping out the newest issue of King Arthur Flour catalogue, we read a description for a poundcake recipe we couldn’t resist. The words, “tastes like a Creamsicle” pretty much guaranteed we would be trying this recipe.

    The topping is extraordinary. Its a combination of citric acid (found in the bulk foods aisle) and superfine sugar and it tastes both sweet and tart.

    The result … a dense, moist cake full of orangey goodness. You can find the recipe here.

    Also check out their Tea Loaf Pan. It bakes a longer, slimmer loaf and is one of our favorites.