Cream scones

Sometimes, I buy cream for a particular recipe and find myself with some leftover that I'd like to use up.  This last time, I thought I'd make some cream scones.

These cream scones are made with butter, egg, and cream - these are rich, crumbly, somewhat flaky, biscuit-like American-style scones.  They're a bit like shortbread cookies with a soft interior.  (In contrast, British-style scones are more cake-like, fluffier and softer - well-suited for splitting and topping with things like clotted cream and jam.)

Once in a while, I'll make a batch of scones and pop them in the freezer so we can have them freshly baked and warm for breakfast.  It's very easy to take them straight from the freezer and into the oven.  So this is what I had in mind and what I did.  That said, it's a struggle for me to work with this kind of American-style scone dough (so it's good to have more practice)...I find the dough generally dry and it's tricky to bring it together to shape and cut without over-handling it.

Frankly, I muddle through and do the best I can.  And while British-style scones might be better suited for splitting and slathering with jam and whatnot, I still sliced these and spread them with things like lemon curd (I use this small-batch recipe) and strawberry jam.  

That way, no one really notices if my scones aren't quite as light and tender as they could be!  

Before baking, I brushed the tops of the scones with cream and showered them with sanding sugar for a little extra color and even more texture.  As you can see, these scones are quite biscuit-like with a flaky, crunchy top and sides.  I didn't manage to slice them without breakage - be ready for lots of crumbs while eating these!

Lemon curd biscuits

Let's not stop the tea party just yet...and extend it just a teensy bit longer, shall we? I need to put the little tea cups and china I bought on our recent trip to London to good use.

So let's sit a spell and have another cup of tea.  Nothing fancy, but we need something to nibble on.  I know!  How about some lemon curd biscuits to go with our cuppa?  Doesn't that sound good?  A traditional crisp, buttery, British-style biscuit with a refreshing taste of lemon is just the thing to go with a cup of tea on a spring afternoon.  

After we braced the long lines and gawked at the crown jewels at the Tower of London, I bought a couple of souvenirs...the tea cup I'm using here and a little book full of recipes for afternoon tea.  This biscuit recipe in that book called out to me because I adore lemon (and other citrus flavors in desserts) and these biscuits actually have a bit of homemade lemon curd stirred into the dough itself to give it a nice strong lemon flavor.

The dough is a bit dry and I likely handled it a little more than I should have.  I found these biscuits best eaten the day they're made and I really enjoyed the flavor of them...a lovely blend of sweet-and-tart from the lemon curd.  The neat thing is you start the recipe by making a small batch of lemon curd.  After using a portion of it for the biscuits, you end up with a little extra lemon curd as an added bonus!

These lemon curd biscuits are great on their own.  But you know me...I dipped some in chocolate.  Absolutely not necessary but it's a near reflexive move that I can't control at times.  Either way, with or without chocolate, it's just about taking a break and enjoying simple things.  Even if it's a tea party for one sometimes, it's nice to take a moment to treat yourself.  

After the biscuits are made, you still have a small bonus amount of homemade lemon curd leftover.  It's an excellent excuse to bake a fresh batch of (British-style) scones, which is just what I did!  Maybe we have a renewed appreciation for British-style scones now because my family and I enjoyed these immensely over Sunday breakfast.  Lemon curd is simply delicious with scones! 

Use the extra lemon curd from this recipe as a spread for scones

Sweet potato biscuits

Chalk this up to a love of sweet potatoes.  It's only natural we want to find ways to use/cook/eat our favorite ingredients.  Because I love sweet potatoes (a whole lot), I've been wanting to make sweet potato biscuits since I saw them on a cooking show.

The orange hue of these biscuits doesn't come from cheddar; it's from sweet potatoes, mashed and stirred together with buttermilk as the wet ingredients that go into an otherwise rather classic buttermilk biscuit formula.  

I meant to make these around Thanksgiving but didn't get around to it but since I kept thinking about them, I just had to make it happen.  Biscuit making (as well as scone dough, pie dough-making, etc.) makes me a little nervous.  There's often that point when I turn the dough out and it's so crumbly, I wonder how I'll ever bring it together, be able to cut out rounds, and bake them in one piece!  I had that moment here but as it usually happens, things work out and I'm very happy these biscuits turned out well in the end.  

They've got the classic crunchy, buttery sides and edges that's just so hard to stop eating, and as for the sweet potato part - it brings a slight sweetness into the picture. I don't know if you'd be able to identify the taste of sweet potatoes specifically (I'd have to say, probably not...) but it adds that little sweetness.  I also like the color and hopefully, there's some goodness to be had from the nutrients from the sweet potato.

I baked half the batch and froze the rest for another night.  I see soup, with a side of sweet potato biscuits, for dinner in the near future.

Mini monkey bread

Holy snow!  Boy oh boy, did it snow!  We got walloped with more than 2 feet of snow this past weekend.  I hope this means we're done for the season (wishful thinking, most likely) but I'm just grateful that we didn't lose power and everyone is safe.  

We had plenty of notice about the blizzard so we were prepared.  And a big part of storm preparedness is obviously, food.  Everyone gets incredibly hungry on snow days, I've noticed.  

So I started Saturday morning with something decadent - monkey bread, a mini version.  It's Chinese New Year in a couple of weeks and it will be the year of the monkey.  That got me thinking about monkey bread.  It's a stretch, I know, so I'll just admit it was an excuse to try monkey bread, something I'd never had before.  

I wanted to make a mini version for my family and that's just what I did on Saturday. A snow day was the perfect setup for a decadent sweet breakfast, which can be rationalized by all the impending exercise from snow shoveling to come.  

I adapted this recipe from Dessert for Two but instead of making 4 muffins, I baked it in a single large (about 16 oz. capacity) ramekin.  I know monkey breads are usually made with either a biscuit or yeast dough; this one is made with a simple homemade biscuit dough.  While I'd probably prefer the yeast variety, the biscuit dough is easy to make and, I think, more suited for a small scale recipe.

My family and I didn't really know what to expect from this little monkey bread but everyone enjoyed the individual little balls of warm biscuits, coated in sweet cinnamon-caramel.  I think the little one was pleasantly surprised.  And do you see that white glare in the background of the photo above?  That's the snow pile at around 9am on Saturday morning.  It just kept on falling and falling, relentlessly, and by that evening, we had a good 2 feet of the fluffy stuff on the ground.    

And the correlation between hunger and a snow day is very real.  The fellas had no problems devouring their first monkey bread breakfast and they seemed hungry every hour or two.  Needless to say, we went through a good chunk of groceries over the weekend, and I'm off to replenish our stock!

Cheddar-bacon biscuits

A couple of months ago, I was seeing twice-baked potatoes everywhere.  After seeing it in yet another magazine one day, I decided to make a couple for dinner.  You could get very creative with the filling but knowing my family, I made classic bacon-cheddar ones with scallions, and those potatoes turned out to be a big hit!  So I've been making twice-baked potatoes with some regularity recently.  When your little one makes a request for something you cook, you can't help but want to comply.

Easy breakfast (or anytime) biscuits with cheddar, bacon, and scallions baked in a muffin tin 

I really shouldn't have been so surprised those potatoes were such a hit.  The little guy loves bacon; if you ask him, everything really is better with bacon (particularly, pancakes and eggs).  Because of that, I usually have some center cut bacon in the fridge or freezer and a few crispy slices often find their way onto our weekend breakfast table.  It always makes me think about my own earlier obsession with bacon-egg sandwiches.  In more recent years, I've switched over to ham but I'm getting reacquainted with bacon again. 

So it was the somewhat-surprising hit of those bacon and cheddar twice-baked potatoes that had me making these biscuits.  I figured it was a safe bet that the fellas would enjoy the same flavors in biscuit form and sure enough, I was right!

To me, just hearing "biscuits" makes me think something delicious is coming my way. And, well, if you like cheddar cheese and bacon, you know the salty, sharp flavor these biscuits promise to provide.  To the mix, I added some sliced scallions.  I think cheddar and bacon just begs for something in the onion family to balance it out.  I used mild scallions/green onions but whether it be chives, leeks, shallots, or regular onions, I enjoy that combination.  Even the little guy enjoys his biscuits (and twice-baked potatoes) with scallions in the mix.

I've really been getting familiar with the simple recipes in my Sweet Paul book.  These biscuits are another adaptation of a recipe I saw in the book.  I turned his morning biscuits with cheddar, dill and pumpkin seeds into this rather more mundane, but still very delicious, cheddar-bacon-scallion rendition.  Once you cook the bacon and shred the cheese, the dough is simple to put together.  I like baking these biscuits in a muffin tin...you get nice crusty, cheesy edges all round.

These biscuits are a nice treat to make for Sunday morning breakfast.  That's what I did, serving them with some easy-over eggs.  Instead of morning biscuits, these would be equally great alongside a bowl of soup or chili, or with a crisp salad.