Great GF Biscuits

So, you know we began eating gluten free in our home about 8, maybe 9, years ago. Since then I have experimented with different gluten free biscuits and tried other folks' gf biscuit recipes. This morning I made Almond Flour Biscuits from Kelly over a The Nourishing Home. They were a hit. 

Note:   The recipe says they make 8 biscuits.  I had a house full of family so I doubled the recipe.  Hmmm....they must be 8 REALLY BIG BISCUITS.  I ended up with about 30 biscuits that were exactly the same size as our Applegate Farms Chicken and Maple sausage patties. 

In addition to the sausage, I served them with some fresh Bob's Red Mill Rolled Oatmeal, blueberries, Stonyfield Farms French Vanilla Yogurt and fresh dark raw honey.  A breakfast feast, to be sure.  I will definitely makes these biscuits again.  Thanks Kelly! 

Hoe Cakes on the Horizon

I'm not a food blogger.  There.  I said it.  I've been blogging about food on and off since 2008 but I AM NOT a food blogger.  In fact, far from it.  I'd go so far as to say I suck at it.  I just don't have the perfectionist gene in me and food is typically an organic affair in my home.  No, not in the way that it is grown (okay, that too) but in how I prepare it.  Though I have lovely Williams-Sonoma measuring cups and spoons and handy-dandy Pampered Chef batter bowls (both sizes, thank you), I find it difficult to pull them out with any regularity.  In fact, forgive me if I've told this to you before, until I was about 14 years old I had NO IDEA that measuring cups existed.  My mother had them but she never used them.  Same for a chopping board.  What she had was an instinct about food.  She chopped onions in her hands - with a sharp knife - and so do I.  There was little perfection in the presentation and Gordon Ramsay would have cringed at her plating skills - though I have no doubt she could have run rings around anyone on any cooking show.  This, my friends, was how I learned to cook.

With those things said, it has been my dream for many years to write a cookbook.  I'm in the beginning stages.  The beginning stages look like a series of hand-written recipes of my creation that are going into a book (thank you Becky Higgins and Project Life).  You see, every day I open my spice cabinet to pull out salt or turmeric or garlic or thyme and I see a hand-written recipe for my Mother's yeast rolls.  It was written later in her life when things such as writing had become so difficult for her but it is still her handwriting that I had come to know so well.   My children may not want things in my handwriting.  Who knows?  But, I am giving this gift to them regardless.  The gift of handwritten recipes from their childhood that they can do with what they wish.

 

So what about the hoe cakes?  Tonight I wrote my first recipe in my new cookbook.  It's something I cook ALL OF THE TIME.  Hoe cakes.  A simple bread to go with dried beans and whatever I harvested that day from the garden.  These are a Southern treat though I have no doubt they are found in other parts of the US and greater world (did you read my post on white beans and universal consciousness?) They are also simple and imperfect and there is rarely one left on the table by the end of the meal.


The recipe goes something like this.

 Prep Time:  10 Minutes
Cook Time:  6 Minutes each batch
Serves:  4 (recipe is easily doubled)

1 cup yellow non-gmo corn meal
1/4 cup flour or baking mix (I use Pamela's GF Baking Mix)
1 tbs sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup mayonnaise or 1 egg
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 tsp butter

Mix all ingredients together.  Heat 1 tsp butter in a large skillet over medium-low heat.  Drop batter in heaping teaspoons into skillet.  Lightly pat down with spatula to make thin disks.  Cook 3 minutes or until browned (I like golden brown - you may prefer it darker).  Flip cakes and cook an additional 3 minutes.  Remove and place on towel lined plate.  Repeat with remaining batter.

Blueberry Muffins

September 21, 2010

We have needed a quick grab and go breakfast for the days we are running a wee bit behind. My husband - the one who is usually quite content to eat ANYTHING that I put in front of him - suggested muffins. What kind of muffins honey? Blueberry. I can do that. Piece of cake or muffin, that is. So, I went to my "go to" source - Pamela's Products website.

I've made Pamela's muffins before and they are tasty (as is everything using Pamela's). I had also been perusing other GF websites on the quest for a delicious GF Blueberry Muffin. I used Pamela's muffin recipe with a couple of changes for a delicious muffin!

I will say that my food photography is still in the works and they did get a little browner than I would have liked, but that was due to the brown sugar/butter mixture I put on top, which BTW I will not do again!

Enjoy!

2 cups Pamela's Baking & Pancake Mix

1/4 cup melted butter, or oil

1/2 sour cream

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup frozen blueberries

Yield: approximately 6 to 7 muffins

Mix first 6 ingredients together. Add blueberries.  Mix gently.  Spoon 2/3 full into muffin pan using muffin cups. I STRONGLY urge you to use the cups. Pamela's baking mix turns out incredibly moist crumbly treats and you want the cup to keep the mess down! Bake in preheated 350º oven for approximately 25 minutes. Makes 10 to 12 muffins.

These may be the best blueberry muffins I have ever eaten. They are certainly the best I've ever made!

Mama's Yeast Rolls

March 30, 2011

I spend a lot of time talking to folks about food and many are surprised to know that like a good cast iron skillet I am a fairly seasoned Southern cook.  One of the things I love about regional foods, whether it is Southern or Chinese or Indian, is that the same dishes circulate through a region for ever and ever, amen.  A good example of this is some of Paula Deen's recipes.  When I first discovered Paula Deen and began reading her cookbooks I was shocked to see that many (and I mean many) could have been taken right out of my Mother's kitchen.  All of the great food I had been raised on had apparently been handed down through generations of cooks - Mothers, Grandmothers and even from slaves.  And, not only had it been handed down but it was a circular handing down that spanned an entire region - in this case the South.

The recipe I'm sharing today is another example of that.  These are the yeast rolls that often graced the dinner table on Sunday afternoons in my childhood home.  Those are dinners that I remember fondly.  The youngest of four children, I had nieces and nephews by the time I entered Kindergarten.  So family dinners included my siblings, their spouses, their children, friends who had stayed over Saturday night and often extended family members as not only did my Mother serve a wonderful table but my parents had the wisdom to install a pool for their large family.

We had all but forgotten those yeast rolls as the last years of my Mother's life found her unable to navigate the kitchen in which she created many meals.  Then, my oldest sister gave us all the family cookbook that her Mother-In-Law had created with her own siblings.  Lo and Behold!  There was an identical yeast roll recipe.  The same no rise yeast roll recipe that makes your mouth water and want to Praise Jesus on Sunday afternoons was there in print.  Now, here it is for you.

1 pack dry yeast

2 cups warm water

4 cups flour (I use pamela's baking mix)

1/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup melted butter

Mix all ingredients.  Spoon into greased muffin tins.  Bake on 425 for 25 minutes.  Watch them starting at 15 minutes to ensure they do not brown too much.