Posts Tagged ‘buttermilk’

I don't often bake cookies any more since it's just the two of us. I actually kind of miss making them. It seemed like when the children were all at home someone always needed cookies for some event or another. Just last week Rob mentioned that he was hungry for these Old Fashioned Sugar Cookies. I got this recipe from my Aunt Nana several years ago and it has become one of our favorites. These are a puffy, soft, cake-like sugar cookie.

Old Fashioned Sugar Cookies

1 cup margarine
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
2 tsps. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. nutmeg
4 cups flour (I use bread flour)

Cream margarine and sugars. Add eggs. Stir together dry ingredients and add alternately with the buttermilk.
Chill this dough for several hours or overnight. You can either roll out this dough and cut with cookie cutters or prepare it the lazy way that I do it by scooping it out with a scoop and flattening the balls of dough with your floured fingers. I find that these bake best if you bake them on parchment lined baking sheets. I have small cookie sheets and find I can only put six on a sheet at a time. I get about two dozen cookies from this recipe. Bake at 400 degrees for 9-10 mins. Cool slightly and remove from cookie sheets. Frost with the following icing:

Browned Butter Frosting
6 Tbsps. butter or margarine
3 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
3-4 Tbsps. milk or cream

Heat the butter over medium heat until a delicate brown. (A stainless steel pan works better than a non-stick pan for this so you can see how it is browning) Remove from heat and mix in the powdered sugar, vanilla, and the milk. Spread on cookies while still warm. Let dry completely before storing the cookies. It works best to place waxed paper between the layers. This should be enough for one batch of cookies.

Scooping out the cookie dough:

Patting out the cookies:

Becka

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I'll interrupt the travelogue to tell you that Megan and Drew joined us on our trek through the Midwest and then came home with us! We were delighted at this turn of events. They stayed with us until Tuesday (yesterday) when they flew home.

I made pancakes Saturday morning for our breakfast since I know this is something Drew really enjoys. It also gave me a chance to try out the griddle on my new stove. It worked like a charm. Drew had plain pancakes, but the rest of us ate pancakes containing blueberries from the garden. Here are some pancakes on the griddle:

Here's the recipe for the pancakes. It's a really good recipe from an old Farm Journal cookbook.

Favorite Buttermilk Pancakes
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 Tbsps. sugar
2 eggs, slightly beaten
2 cups buttermilk
2 Tbsps. melted butter or oil

Stir together the flour, baking soda, salt, and sugar in a mixing bowl.

In another bowl combine the eggs, buttermilk, and melted butter or oil.

Combine the two mixtures by stirring just enough to moisten the flour. Do not over mix.

The batter may still be a bit lumpy. This is a thick batter. If you prefer a thinner batter you can add a bit more buttermilk, but in my humble opinion it makes perfect pancakes!

Bake on a lightly greased griddle (I grease it by holding a partially unwrapped stick of butter or margarine and running it over the hot griddle.) Dip batter by 1/4 cup measure. Turn when the bubbles on the top of the pancakes start to break and the top loses some of its shine. This amount will make enough for about four people with average appetites.

For the blueberry variation just drop a few berries on the pancakes while you are cooking the first side. You can also add chopped banana, nuts, well drained cherries, chocolate chips, etc.

Here's a picture of our little pancake eater:

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The Lord has blessed us this summer with a variety of berries from our garden. If you read my husband Rob's blog you may have seen some of his posts about our yard and garden. Our lot is shaped like a piece of pie and the top rounded part at the back of the lot is a stone ditch. Rob planted monkey grass, day lillies, and daffodils on the far side of the ditch and he has planted blackberries, red raspberries, and blueberries on the side of the ditch closest to our house. There's a picture of some of the bushes in this blog post. (Scroll to the bottom)

This is the first year we have gotten a good amount of red raspberries and blueberries. The blackberries are just starting to come on and it looks like it will be a good year for them as well.

I've tried a couple of new recipes with the red raspberries and recently Rob made one of our favorite muffins with the first of the blueberries. This recipe is a combination of a recipe I got years ago from a student and a streusel topping recipe that DD Megan got when she took Cooking in high school. The muffins contain buttermilk which gives them a slight tang and helps keep them nice and tender. If you have access to some fresh berries you will have to give it a try.

Best Ever Blueberry Muffins

2 1/2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
2 1/2 tsps. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup oil
1 1/2 cup blueberries

Streusel Topping:
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 1/2 Tablespoons flour
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 1/2 Tbsps. margarine or butter

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease muffin tins. Combine streusel ingredients to make a crumbly topping.
Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Combine the eggs, buttermilk, and oil in a small bowl. Fold the blueberries gently into the dry ingredients. (This helps to prevent green or aqua blueberry muffins!) Add the liquid ingredients and stir gently just enough to combine. Carefully spoon into the prepared muffin tins. Top each muffin with a portion of the streusel topping. Bake for about 20 minutes or until the muffins test done. Makes about 18 muffins. Here's a picture of the finished muffins:

Becka

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Oatmeal Muffins is another one of our favorites. I originally got this recipe from my sister-in-law, Deb, who has given me many very good recipes over the years. These muffins don't have any fancy ingredients but when all are combined together they produce a delicious muffin. I really like to use buttermilk in a variety of baked goods. It helps to tenderize cakes and muffins and gives them a nice flavor. I have tried substituting the powdered buttermilk in the past but in my humble opinion it's just not as good. I try to keep a carton of buttermilk in the refrigerator at all times and use it for biscuits, muffins, pancakes, waffles, etc. I find it will keep for at least a month.

Oatmeal Muffins

1 cup oatmeal (dry)
1 cup buttermilk
1 egg
1/3 cup oil
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt

In a small bowl combine the oats and buttermilk and let stand for a few minutes. After this add the egg and oil.

In another bowl whisk together the brown sugar, flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Briefly combine the wet and the dry ingredients. Scoop into 12 muffin cups. Bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 mins.

I hope you will give these a try sometime. They are good for breakfast or as a bread with soup or something similar.

We are enjoying our guests from Germany. They are learning new English words and phrases and we are learning German as well. One night we had fun teaching them how to play Chicken Foot Dominoes. We tried to think of a game that was pretty easy to explain and where you didn't need a great deal of English vocabulary. They caught on quickly and we had a fun evening.

Becka

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Do you use biscuit mix? I like having it on hand for biscuits in a hurry and also use it as an ingredient in several recipes. I have a couple of Bisquick cookbooks from years gone by which contain some good casseroles and desserts.

Over the years I have tried several recipes for making my own biscuit mix and have finally settled upon a very easy one that works well in every recipe I have tried.

To make this biscuit mix you need just two ingredients:
1. Self-rising flour (self-rising flour has baking powder and salt added to it and is a Southern pantry staple)
2. Shortening

I usually combine the following:
8 cups self-rising flour
1 cup shortening

Cut in shortening with a pastry blender.

Store in a cool, dry place. I store mine in a Tupperware container in my baking cabinet. Use as you would any biscuit mix.

You can actually make this in any size batch you desire by combining 2 Tablespoons shortening per cup of self-rising flour. This is handy to know if you don't normally use biscuit mix, but need a small amount for a recipe you would like to try.

For a batch of about eight biscuits I normally use about 3 cups of the mix with a cup of buttermilk. Stir together the dough with a spatula. It should be pretty moist. If your buttermilk is very fresh and thick you may need more. A sticky dough will produce the best biscuits. Scrape out the dough onto a very well floured cloth. I flip half of the cloth over onto the dough and knead it about eight times through the cloth and then pat it out into a circle of dough about 3/4 inch thick. I then cut out the biscuits with my trusty biscuit cutter made from an old soup can.

Pat out the dough scraps and cut or form into a couple more biscuits. Bake at 450 degrees for 12-15 mins. These add a bit of flair to an otherwise hum drum meal.

This makes really good biscuits and is a handy mix to keep in your pantry. I hope you will give it a try.

Becka

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