Recipe for Holiday Biscuits and Ham

I hope you're having a peaceful and pleasant holiday season!  Growing up in the south, biscuits were a table staple.  There were more biscuit recipes than beehive hairdos!  Mayonnaise biscuits, butter biscuits, rolled biscuits, drop biscuits,... and one of my favorites, cream biscuits.

These yummy little cream biscuits, spread with some jalapeno (or raspberry) jam,  nestled around a piece of ham, and sprinkled with some lemon salt are sure to be a favorite.  I served them for both brunch and as an appetizer for a dinner party this holiday.  They can be made ahead of time and served room temperature or warmed briefly in the oven.  Be sure to use the biscuit cutting technique as described so the biscuits can rise properly and pull apart beautifully when you are ready to add the ham slices.

Time: 30 minutes
Yield: 24 small biscuits

Ingredients:

• Your choice of ham (I used a Kirkland ham steak)
• Jalapeno or raspberry jam, yellow mustard for serving
• Biscuit cutter, small
• 2 2/3 cups of AP flour (plus more for your hands and the counter)
• 2 2/3 tsp baking powder
• 5/8 tsp table salt (not kosher)
• 2 tsp sugar
• 2 cups cream
• 1/4 cup milk
• Sprinkling salt (kosher or other large particle salt; I used lemon salt)

Method:

• Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
• Line half-sheet cake pan with parchment or baking mats.
• Mix together the flour, baking powder, table salt, and sugar and then stir in the cream.
• Turn out on well floured counter and sprinkle top of dough and your hands well with flour.
• Knead until well mixed and coming together into a ball, about 1 minute.
• Reflour counter and pat dough out to 1/2 to 3/4 inch deep circle, flipping dough over frequently as you pat it out so it doesn't stick.
• Using a biscuit cutter, or a small glass with a sharp edge, press down briskly through the dough to form biscuits.  Don't twist the cutter, just straight down and then pick it up.  The biscuit will either stay put or be in the cutter-you can gently flick it out.  If you twist the cutter or use something not sharp, the biscuits will puff up like rolls instead of rising nicely. If you reshape the dough for additional cutting, try to handle it as little as possible, just push it together gently and continue cutting.  The second pass biscuits are never as "good looking" as the first pass and you may have to cut them rather than pull them apart.
• Brush the top of the biscuits with milk and sprinkle on your sprinkling salt.
• Bake for 20 minutes, or until nicely browned.
• While biscuits cook, use the cookie cutter to cut out rounds of ham (you can glaze and pan fry the ham if you like).
• Cool briefly, then pull each biscuits in half and pop a piece of ham inside.
• Serve, or let cool completely and then cover and keep at room temperature for a few hours until ready to serve.  If longer than that, keep in fridge and take out far enough ahead to allow them to come to room temperature.  Can reheat in 200 degree oven for about 10 minutes if desired.
• Serve with your choice of jams (we loved it with jalapeno jam, raspberry jam) or simple yellow mustard.

At the dinner party, I served these with some champagne.  Perfect!  

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Recipe for Simple Biscuits-Daring Bakers

Mmmm, fresh out of the oven!  We don't eat biscuits as a general rule although I used to eat them frequently enough when I lived in the South.  I was surprised how much we both enjoyed these when I made them for our monthly Daring Bakers challenge.

Audax Artifex was our January 2012 Daring Bakers’ host.. Aud worked tirelessly to master light and fluffy scones (a/k/a biscuits) to help us create delicious and perfect batches in our own kitchens!  Aud hails from down under, hence the "scone" reference.


This lovely, simple recipe has so many possibilities beyond the simple, yet fabulous plain biscuit (scone). Cheese biscuits come to mind as the first variety I might try next.


Tuck this away for when you want a quick and reliable biscuit recipe!


Yield: 8 biscuits
Time: 20 minutes (or 60 minutes if you follow the options)


Ingredients:

• 1 cup/140 grams plain all purpose flour
• 2 tsp/10 grams baking powder (make sure it is fresh)
• 1/4 tsp/1 1/2 grams table salt
• 2 TBSP frozen grated butter (grated on large holes of box grater)
• 1/2 cup (120 ml) cold 1% milk plus a dab for brushing the tops

Method:

• Preheat oven to 475 degrees.
• Sift the flour, salt and baking powder three times.
• Optional: place sifted ingredients in refrigerator for 20 minutes to chill.
• To the sifted dry ingredients, rub in the grated butter until the mix looks like a mix of large sand pieces and pea sized pieces.
• Add the milk to the bowl with the dry ingredient/butter mixture and mix with hands until a sticky dough is formed.
• Turn dough out on to a floured surface and sprinkle the top with flour.
• Gently knead a few times, then fold into thirds several times, gently pressing out between folds.
• Pat dough out into an approximately 6 x 4 inch rectangle.
• Using a floured biscuit cutter (approximately 2 inches) cut 4-5 biscuits pressing down, not twisting.
• Reform dough and cut out 2 more biscuits.
• Use scraps to form final biscuit.
• Place biscuits in baking pan.
• Optional: place formed biscuits into refrigerator for 20 minutes.
• Brush top of biscuits with milk and then bake for approximately 10 minutes.
• Serve warm.  Can be cooled to room temperature and stored in freezer bag in freezer.
• Reheat briefly.

Biscuits formed, ready for fridge

Out of the oven

Mmmm, ready to eat

If you are interested in more information about the Daring Kitchen challenges, here is the website.

Printable recipe

Another Daring Baker challenge I participated in:  Sans Rival Cake

Recipe for Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Scone Muffins

When I'm out for my morning bike ride, I sometimes have some creative ideas for the kitchen.  Take these scone muffins...I wanted to make something portable for a brunch time snack.  Thinking about what was on hand during my ride, I came up with the idea of using a package of King Arthur Scone Mix as a base for some savory muffins.  These were really good and around 180 calories each!

Ingredients:

• 16 oz scone mix
• 1 large egg
• 1 ¾ cup low fat buttermilk, plus more for brushing
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 cup chopped Canadian bacon
• 1 cup egg whites, cooked with 1/3 cup chives, chopped
• ¾ cup shredded low fat cheddar cheese
• Baking spray
• Fleur de Sel (or other large crystal salt)

Method:

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
• Add egg, salt, and buttermilk to scone mix and mix until well moistened.
• Stir in bacon, eggs, and cheese.
• Spray 12 cup muffin tin with baking spray.
• Divide batter between muffin cups.
• Bake in upper third of oven for 20-25 minutes until browning on tops.
• Remove from oven and cool for 5 minutes on a rack.
• Brush tops with buttermilk and sprinkle with Fleur de Sel.
• Cool 10 more minutes and remove from pans.
• Serve warm or store in airtight container and serve room temperature or reheated (cut in half and cook 20 seconds in microwave).

You could do the same thing with your favorite muffin batter or quick bread mix.  The texture of these was great, I'm sure from the scone mix (which makes up great scones by the way-unsponsored).  The salty top was a nice touch, so don't skip that part.  

These transported well, reheated well, and tasted great.  I'm claiming this recipe to be a home run!

Printable Recipe

Book Review: "On A Stick" by Matt Armendariz (and recipe)

Photo by Matt Armendariz, used with permission

A few weeks ago, I was fortunate to receive a free review copy of a new fun and quirky cookbook, “On a Stick!” by photographer and blogger Matt Armendariz, published by Quirk Books, May 2011.   Ha!  Quirky cookbook, published by Quirk books-unplanned, honestly!  OK, moving on.  I follow Matt’s blog (mattbites.com) so I was enthusiastic to see what in the world he had come up with for his “anything on a stick” cookbook.

Well, Matt did not disappoint!  Now, I’m not saying I’d make everything in this cookbook. However, there are plenty of fun appetizer or snack ideas that I would make and others that will inspire me to adapt the recipes to my ingredients/style. 

Any cookbook based on street food and country fair treats is bound to have its share of fried, and I mean deep fried, goodies.  Think pineapple funnels (spears of pineapple wrapped in funnel cake batter and deep fried), deep fried candy bars (no explanation needed!), suppli (fried risotto stuffed with cheese), and deep fried mac ‘n’ cheese (again, you can probably figure that one out). 

But what I really liked about the cookbook is that those jaw-dropping, fun to read about, heart attack inducing, oh so delicious recipes are interspersed between good for you ones like dak sanjuk (Korean marinated chicken and veggies), caprese sticks (as you’d imagine but with regular and sun-dried tomatoes), fresh mango with chili powder (just as described with a squeeze of lime and touch of salt), and fruit salad skewers (beautiful skewers, perfect for kids of all ages).

As you can imagine, Matt has produced a cookbook with a beautiful full page picture of each of the 80 completed recipes.  Ah, to be able to get those kinds of photos.  Oh, well, one can only dream!

I was on a Twitter chat where Matt was the featured guests and I asked him what was the inspiration for the Fudge Puppies on page 157 of the book.  “I really wanted something chilly, chocolatety, and messy in the book!”  Not one to pass up much in the way of chocolate myself, I thought I’d give them a try.

Time: 60 minutes

Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients:

• 4 wooden sticks
• 2 frozen Belgian waffles, toasted and cut down the middle
• 4 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Method:

• Insert a wooden stick into each half waffle and freeze about 30 minutes.
• Melt chocolate chips in a double boiler over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally.
• Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.  Dip frozen waffle sticks in melted chocolate, creating a thin, even layer.  Place on baking sheet and let chocolate set before serving.

Tip from Matt-Before chocolate sets completely you can dip Fudge Puppies in chopped peanuts, sprinkles, or homemade whipped cream.

I need to work on my dipping technique to get that "thin, even layer"!

Well done Matt!  Classic fair food at home.  Next, I think I should try the spam and pineapple skewers, don’t you think?  (Maybe with low salt turkey spam.)

Matt’s book is available on Amazon here. FYI, I am not compensated for reviewing or linking to Amazon.

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