Cheddar Buttermilk Drop Biscuits

I praise God that I had already decided to make these even before the Green Onion Biscuit Fiasco of '08. I can still taste the baking soda.

These were okay, but need some work. First off, they were a bit dry for my taste. Part of that was my on-going issue with yellow-orange food. Where Yukon Golds made it difficult to see how well mixed-in the eggs in my gnocchi were, the somewhat orange batter (from the cornmeal and the cheddar) made it difficult to see how brown these biscuits were getting. Simply put, they were overdone.

Granted, this may have been, in part, because I didn't take seriously the direction that this was to make only 8 biscuits which were then to be split. In other words, these babies are HUGE. So, by making about 16 normal ones, I may have hastened the over-doneness.

Secondly, the flavor was a bit bland. This may have been because of the dryness, which kills taste. But it definitely needs some sharpness. Maybe some mustard powder, like you use to punch up Mac & Cheese.

Overall, there is potential here, so I'll give this guy another shot or two.

Angel Food Cake

We had neighbors over for dinner this week and I was still reeling from the awesomeness of the Orange Caramel Sauce. I wanted to show this stuff off with a new desert.

How do I let that sauce become the centerpiece? It works great with strawberries, so that was a gimme. So, I wanted a cake or cookie with a neutral flavor which would let more of the pure sauce flavor through.

I hit on the obvious choice of Angel Food Cake. Bonus? Angel Food Cake has virtually no fat in it. I'd forgotten that. Well, there was no way I was going to go with store bought for that because I needed to learn how. But I kept that option open if things went to hell.

Treebeards' had a recipe that looked pretty straightforward. Turns out it's really, really easy. The result was, frankly, perfect.

The only difficulty I faced was that the recipe calls for the flute pan to be ungreased, but I had a little trouble getting the cake out, even with a non-stick surface. Running a table knife around the edges and bottom worked fine, but I can't help feeling there's something wrong. Either the recipe missed that step or I should grease and dust the pan. I'm leaning towards the first.

Update: I've since learned I'm wrong about needing to grease the pan. Chris Kendall explained it in passing on America's Test Kitchen. Apparently, since there's no yeast or baking powder in the mix, all the rising comes from the expansion of the air bubbles and the egg whites essentially "climbing" the sides of the tube pan. If you grease the pan, the mix can't "grip" the side and it won't rise properly. I never got around to trying a greased pan, so that's a good thing.

Also, I've tried Jewel's bakery-made ones since the original post. They suck. This is easy enough that there's no excuse for wasting your money on those things.

Pizza Bianca

I started going through the Cook's Illustrated site a month or two ago and found that you can sign up to be a Recipe Tester with them. Sweet. Sadly, I can't find the link now. As much as I love them, I can't give them props on the site design.

Anyway, while this is listed as a "Pizza," it's really pretty close to a Focaccia. Baking is really another of my weak spots, so I had general trepidations. As I didn't have time on a weeknight for letting the dough rise for 2.5 hours and then baking, I put the dough in the fridge like they said until Saturday.

Needless to say, it didn't triple in size as it warmed and rose. I'd say it rose to 150% of the original size in the bowl. This concerned me that I was going to have a brick, so I bought a backup loaf of Tuscan bread, just in case. But as I was spreading it out on the sheet, it sure felt like there was plenty of air in the dough. Sure enough, it was just perfect.

The recipe was pretty straightforward in the end. I made three changes to the recipe:

• I don't own a pizza stone, so I skipped that.
• I only had bleached all-purpose flour - no unbleached.
• At the 20 minute mark where you add the rosemary, I also tossed on parmesan cheese.

Neither of the first two affected the results, it seemed, and the third was just tasty. This is a total winner of a recipe (which I will post later - promise). I think I'm going to have to try other breads now.

Scones

I used to hate scones. They were dry, tasteless and way too uppity. My entire experience with them, of course, was based on the ones at Starbucks. And then one day at Panera, I decided to try theirs, taking one each of their Orange Iced and the Savory Ham and Cheese.

Damn. I'm not sure what possessed me to to give them a shot, but those were revelations. both varieties were moist and flavorful, with a distinct firm (but not dry or tough) texture. I love them.

I also noticed that my Foster's Market cookbook had a recipe for them, with a number of variations. I made one batch, divided the dough in half, and then mixed in diced ham and shredded cheddar into one half of the dough. Overall, not bad. They're definitely better served fresh, that's for sure.

A few observations:

• Scones are basically biscuits. I should have guessed, but I didn't know that before. At least, this recipe is pretty much the same as my biscuit recipe.
• My oven still needs some adjustment. It's running a little hot now. These were looking done about 3/4 of the way through, easily.
• The texture was a bit crumbly - not unlike the problem I have with muffins. I think I need to work on the balance between combining and overworking ingredients with flour.
• I don't like working dough in my food processor. The bits in the corners of the food bowl were dry because the blades couldn't get at them. I had to work them in by hand. Though maybe if I had run it a little longer, I would have gotten them mixed in right and gotten enough gluten action. I was definitely conservative.
• I need to practice more with the ham and cheese to nail how well Panera does it. I'll probably buy a couple to take home and work side-by-side with them.

Do-Over - Lemon Pound Cake

So, following the Tangerine Pound Cake debacle, I had to get back on the horse and try it again. Having used up the tangerines, it was time to go with lemon. I didn't have any fresh citrus in the house, but I had Penzey's Minced Lemon Peel and ReaLemon. I figured that'd be good enough.

By this time, you know where this is going, right?

Nope, of course they weren't good enough.

While I baked the cake for a longer time, the dried zest was awful. Little hard bits in the bake. While I may not have soaked them long enough before mixing in, I think they were just a bad direction to go in in the first place. I hate to waste anything, but I think I need to throw that bottle away.

The interior was still underdone. Not really to the extreme as the Tengerine version, but there was a noticable bit that was underbaked in the center. This is were the "continuity" of the entries gets a bit off. This was actually the point where I realized that the oven needed re-calibration.

Also, we found out that Dee-Dee, our cat, will eat anything. Including pound cake. Stupid cat.

Tangerine Pound Cake

Well, this was a disaster. A tasty one, but a disaster nonetheless.

As we had nothing sweet in the house, I decided to try making a pound cake, vaugely inpired that the DeLaurentis woman's show. Since I had some tangerines that needed to be used and no lemons, I took the Lemon Pound Cake recipe from the Gourmet Cookbook and swapped out the citrus.

One thing right off the bat - it takes a LOT longer to zest a tangerine than a lemon. I think because it's harder for the grater to get a grip on the smoother rind of the Clementine or something.

Everything was pretty straightforward, but thank God I turned it out of the pan and onto a plate instead of a rack. Because as soon as it hit the ceramic, it exploded. Like a chocolate lava cake, but yellow and more lava. 2" or so on each end were done, but everything in the middle was a thin wall of cake holding in (until hitting the place) hot batter.

Those end pieces tasted awfully good, though. It's a winner of a recipe.

So what happened? Well, obviously it didn't cook enough. The duration was fine (I did about the full 55 minutes), but I would guess that the oven temperature was too low. According to the manual, I can recalibrate it up to 35F in either direction. So time to buy a cheap oven thermometer and adjust this puppy. This also explains the issue with the lemon poppyseed cake from a while back.

But also, I have to re-think how I'm testing for doneness. I did test this with a toothpick and it came out clean. I've been going for no batter on the toothpick, but reading some other recipes, I think that what I really want is actual crumbs on the toothpick. The oil & fat content is high enough that I think there is an intermediate stage where the batter slips of the toothpick, but hasn't formed crumbs yet.

Green Onion Buttermilk Biscuits

I don't really know what to say about these other than they're incredibly good and I've never screwed them up. They're the only home made biscuits I've ever made and have been consistently successful for 6 years. So, I'd say it's a fool proof recipe. For some reason, it's not on-line, so this is a scan of a xerox from the magazine. I'll clean that up with either a scan of the original, if I find it, or I'll type it. But in the meantime...