Love through the stomach... » Biscuit

Cinnamon biscuit casserole

Valerie — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 23:53:29 +0000

I’m on a breakfast post roll, can you tell?

This breakfast casserole turned out so dense, heavy and rich that from now on I’ll be serving it as dessert. I kid you not. This with some whipped cream, or vanilla ice cream – oh my, it’s be great!

This casserole was an experiment. I wanted to make the French toast casserole I’ve made before. But didn’t think of prepping it on time and didn’t have (enough) of all the ingredients. So I improvised. It turned out to be like a dense bread pudding. Delicious, so incredibly tasty, but soo very much too rich for our breakfast tastes.

So if you’re in to heavy breakfast, go right ahead and make this for breakfast or brunch. If you’re like us and like your breakfast a little lighter, I still suggest you making it. Just serve it up as dessert. That’s it!

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Cinnamon biscuit casserole

A couple of slices of leftover bread (nice heavy crusty bread preffered, but any bread will work)

Eggs

Milk

Cinnamon

Sugar

Vanilla (I use some home made vanilla sugar to replace part of the regular sugar!)

some (home-made) biscuit mix (mine is partially whole wheat)

First off: No amounts were given. This is a perfect ‘what’s in the fridge’ kind of dish, adjust the amounts to what you have. A little eggier or more or less chunks of bread are no problem at all. It would work without milk, it would work with less biscuit mix (be a little more like french toast) or less bread (be a little more like cake). It’ll be tasty no matter what, cinnamon and sugar will make sure of that!

In a big bowl, beat the eggs with some milk (there should be more egg than milk)and a lot of cinnamon and sugar. Cut or pull the slices of bread into smallish pieces. Scoop some bisquit mix into the egg mixture and mix well, into a not-too-thick mix. It should be thinner than drop-biscuit dough, but slightly thicker than pancake batter. Drop the pieces of bread into the bowl and mix them in well.

Pour/scoop the biscuit/bread/egg mix into a greased casserole dish and sprinkle some more cinnamon and sugar over the top. A couple of little pats of butter are optional.

Place the casserole in a pre-heated oven (about 350F) and cook until brown and fully cooked (a skewer should come out dry, if you push it with your finger the eggy mixture should be a little bouncy and spring right back.

Serve with some mascarpone or (vanilla flavored) cream cheese for breakfast or with a sweet cream (whipped cream, ice cream, sweetened heavy cream) for dessert.

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Baking supplies

Valerie — Mon, 31 May 2010 16:35:28 +0000

The Pioneer Woman makes me jealous. Not when she posts pictures of scary snakes that sit in her yard. I can do without that nooo problem. I get very very very jealous when I see her kitchen though. She has a ‘baking station’ with ‘flour/sugar drawers’. Seriously, if I didn’t have L, she wasn’t married and it would be legal, I would totally marry her just for her kitchen. Seriously!

Now I shouldn’t whine. After August 31st I will have an awesome kitchen as well. It’s large and beautiful and has everything I need. Except for the baking station… with the flour/sugar drawers.

I already told L that I want those drawers too. We will have to remodel the kitchen a tiny bit, can’t we just include those drawers in there.

I included bribes like ‘baking every day’ and such, but L didn’t seem convinced.

So this morning I told my co-worker about the awesomeness of PW’s kitchen and drawers. I told her I’d checked about 3 million kitchen websites and none of them offered them. And then my wonderful wonderful co-worker said “oh, but they have those old fashioned cupboards that have those, they’re called ‘grutterskasten’, check furniture stores instead of kitchen stores”.

So I did a google search on grutterskasten and kruidenierskasten and there’s a whole giant massive collection of different types and styles of those cupboards.

So now I want a cupboard like this!

Or like this!

There are so many possibilities!!!

I’ll just have to go measure the empty wall space in my kitchen (I know exactly which wall I can use) and then I can go pick one up!

Soooo excited!!!!

(Which one is your favorite???)

Cheese biscuits with ham and a poached egg

Valerie — Sun, 23 May 2010 11:57:14 +0000

Now that I’ve managed to poach an egg, I’ve become somewhat obsessed with it. Well, not really, but I did figure I could give it another try.

Making breakfast when you didn’t think of actually buying breakfast, is always a challenge. I got up and had a growling stomach. Never a good sign. Especially when you then realize that you need to buy groceries. Las week has been such a weird week, with multiple nights of working late and way too many obligations to fulfill. Thinking about weekend groceries during the week, was about the furthest thing from my mind.

But then I woke up on Saurday. And had a growling stomach.

L was still sleeping, which gave me time to figure out what to do about breakfast. Would I quickly jump in to some clothes and make a quick grocery run? Or would I wing it?

Wing it it was! I figured I always have ingredients to bake something myself. So why change out of my pj’s if I can just as easy whip up a batch of something to go in the oven.

I decided on making a new batch of biscuit mix. It’s basically bisquick without any additives, made at home, stored in the fridge and always at your disposal. You can actually alter the flour that goes in, so it becomes more to your taste. Whole wheat, plain flour, whatever you like. I like to always keep a container of the mix in my fridge, but recently I kept postponing. I needed a new batch of biscuit mix and I needed breakfast. So I solved both issues at once.

Now just plain biscuits with a little butter (or a little sugar too) are a very tasty breakfast to me. However, I figured I could mix it up a little. Make something resembling more of an actual full meal/breakfast/brunch. So in addition to the biscuits (which magically became cheese biscuits) I cooked some ham and poached an egg for each of us. Now the eggs I used were 2 days older again, so to make it into a pretty poached egg was harder even. But I succeeded in poaching two egg that were very edible. Tasty even!

Biscuit mix (partially whole grain)

1/4 cup of baking powder

4 cups of plain white flour

1 cup of whole grain flour

2 tbsp white sugar

1 tsp salt

1 cup lard

Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl, add the lard. Cut the lard through the dry ingredients using a pastry blender. Once fully mixed (no lard or dry ingredient lumps, the whole mix somewhat resembles breadcrumbs) place in the refrigerator in an airtight container. Use like you would use any store bought biscuit mix. (This mix makes awesome pancakes too, just add regular or buttermilk and an egg to make a pancake batter!)

Cheese biscuits

biscuit mix

milk

grated cheese

Place as much biscuit mix as you need in a bowl, add some grated cheese (a 1:2 ratio cheese:biscuit mix is the maximum) to the bowl. Pour in some milk, a little at a time, mix well. Keep adding a little more milk if necessary. You want a very sticky soft, but not runny dough.

Using 2 spoons drop small amounts of dough on a cookie sheet. Bake in a pre-heated oven (about 190 degrees celsius) until they’re golden brown.

Chicken and mushroom pie

Valerie — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 22:05:50 +0000

My car is very very blue again. Or that’s what L said after we left the carwash. I hadn’t decided what to make for dinner yet when we drove by the grocery store. I asked L whether we should go in. We both sincerely hate Saturday afternoon shopping, so we decided against it as I quickly figured out what I still had left in the fridge. I knew there were mushrooms that desperately needed to be eaten, some heavy cream that neared it’s best-by date and some biscuit dough mix I’d made a couple weeks ago and saved. The biscuit mix is awesome, it’s like having a box of bisquick on hand without all the additives.

I proposed making a chicken and mushroom pie, with biscuit dough as pie crust. L agreed, so we stopped at AH-to-go (tiny tiny little rail station grocery store that has basics but nothing more) to pick up a chicken breast and a tiny bottle of wine.

The pie was a recipe I’d never made before. Actually, I didn’t even have a recipe, but I figured it’d work and be tasty. so why not. I ended up just making it up as I went along and ended up with a fabulous dish which I’m sure we’ll make many times over! It’s got a perfect blend of flavors, without anything overpowering. And best of all, except for the chicken and mushrooms, you’ll usually have the ingredients anyway!

Chicken and mushroom pie (could serve 4, did serve 2)

1 large chicken breast

1 box of mushrooms, any kind

bacon bits (not too many, but enough to give off flavor)

1 clove of garlic (it really doesn’t need more, or it’ll overpower the subtle flavors!)

butter

all purpose flour

heavy cream

white wine

dried herbs to your taste (I used rosemary, thyme, sage and parsley)

fresh ground pepper

biscuit mix (bisquick or home-made)

milk

grated cheese (optional)

Fry the bacon bits, add a little olive oil to get them going, if needed. Cube chicken and sprinkle herbs and fresh ground pepper over the cubes liberally. As soon as the bacon is crispy (and has released enough fat to cook chicken in) add the chicken. Cut the mushrooms into quarters and add to the pan. Cook for a couple of minutes and transfer the mixture to a deep pie pan. Don’t worry about leftover bits of herb or bacon and grease!
In the same (now empty) pan melt some butter and press the clove of garlic into the pan. As soon as the butter has melted add flour and stir until it’s completely incorporated. Cook the mixture a couple of minute until it browns a slight bit. This’ll make sure it won’t taste flour-y. Change your wooden spoon for a whisk and pour a liberal amount of heavy cream into the pan – wile whisking ferociously. Whisk until the cream is incorporated and there are no lumps in the sauce. Add white wine and repeat, more cream is an option too, just add liquids until your sauce has a nice thickness. Make sure you do add some wine though, that really adds flavor (and the alcohol will boil out, so don’t worry about serving it to kids…)
Put the mushroom/chicken mixture back in the pan with the sauce and stir so that everything is covered with sauce. In the meantime prepare the biscuit dough. I added grated cheese to the mix and poured milk in and mixed it until it was a little softer than you would for making biscuits, but still thick enough to spread like a crust.

Put the chicken/ mushroom/ sauce mix back into the pie pan, scoop the biscuit mix on top and spread it out evenly. Don’t worry if the dish isn’t fully covered. Bake in a pre-heated oven (just under 200 celsius) until the biscuit crust is nice and brown.