Urge to bake
Last week I received a newsletter from a magazine to which I subscribe. Actually it was from their website birdchannel.com. At the bottom was an ad from hobbyfarms.com that caught my eye. It read, “Looking for good recipes? We’ve got everything from animal treats to zucchini bread”. I didn’t bother to see where the ad was from at first. I just saw that picture of zucchini bread and wanted some. I snagged recipes for cornbread and pumpkin biscuits as well.
Tonight I made the biscuits which reminded me why I don’t bake, ever! It started with me getting out the mixing bowl to combine the dry ingredients the next step was to mix in the cold butter until the mixer was “crumbly” but I couldn’t find our 30 year-old avocado green hand mixer. “Kurt where’s the mixer?”
“You mean the old hand mixer?”
“Yes”
“You threw it out when we got the Kitchen Aid mixer” Yep that sounds like me. I can’t deny that one. So I wash out the bowl that comes with the Kitchen Aid, dry it out, and pour my dry mixture into the bowl dumping some of it into the sink (at least I think a little bit ahead and know some ain’t gonna make it through the transfer). I added the butter, but I never got the “crumbly” look that the instructions said to watch for – I’m not even sure the butter really mixed in. Oh well, the next ingredient is milk – oops that was a little too much. Add the pumpkin – oops a bit too much of that too. Why is this stuff so damn sticky? How in the hell will I roll it out? Ok I’ll just add more flower…this isn’t working. I told Kurt I didn’t think they were going to turn out and he said, “that’s ok I appreciate your effort.” Now most women would say, “aawww that’s so sweet” but I know Kurt.
With one eyebrow raised, “You just said that so you have the freedom to spit it back out in front of me if you don’t like it didn’t you?”
“Well, yeah” he answered. In the end he said they turned out pretty well even though at one point during our meal Kurt accidentally dropped his biscuit and it made a “thud” sound on the table. We burst into laughter and of course had to tease the crap out of me by writing on our calendar that I made, “Bean soup and pumpkin flavored concrete”. He actually ate two of my pumpkin flavored concrete disks. And yes, we keep a calendar of who made which meal on what day – it helped eliminate most of our arguments about whose turn it is to wash the wretched dishes.
If you can’t find the recipe on the hobby farms site here it is:
You can use commercially canned or homegrown pumpkin for this recipe. If doing the latter, bake the pumpkin rather than boil it in order to get a drier, denser product. After scraping the baked flesh from the rinds, use an electric mixer to beat until smooth. Remove any tough, fibrous pieces that didn’t cook down.
Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
¼ cup brown sugar
1 tsp. salt
3 T. baking powder
1 Tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. nutmeg
¼ tsp. allspice
1/8 tsp. ginger
1/3 cup butter, cold
¾ cup pumpkin
¾ cup milk
additional flour if neededPreparation
Stir together dry ingredients. Using a pastry blender, cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add pumpkin and milk, stirring just until ingredients are moistened and a soft dough forms. If the dough seems very soft, add more flour, a few tablespoons at a time, just until the dough is easy to handle.On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to a half-inch thick. Using a 2-inch biscuit or cookie cutter in a simple shape of your choice (such as a pumpkin or leaf), dip the cutter into flour, shake off excess and press into biscuit dough. Place biscuits on a lightly greased cookie sheet one-inch apart and bake at 450 degrees F for 8 to 12 minutes or until golden brown. Serve hot with butter and honey or apple butter. Makes about 12 biscuits.
That is the recipe exactly as it shown on the hobby farms site, so I have no idea if the “1 Tsp. cinnamon” is actually a tablespoon or a teaspoon. It is the only one with a capital “T”, but still has the “sp”. I used a tablespoon. In addition, I think if I make this another time I’m going to cut the baking powder to one tablespoon instead of THREE and just add more flour. I hope that I’ll get more fluffy biscuits instead of such dense and heavy bread.
June 21st, 2007 at 11:22 am
ummm hun tsp is teaspoon not tablespoon which tbl.. stick with the recipe and don’t oopppsss on the amounts… better luck next time
June 21st, 2007 at 12:21 pm
I know tablespoon is usually tbl but some recipes just use a lower case “t” or upper case “T” to differentiate the two. In this recipe the cinnamon and baking powder both had a capital “T”. The baking powder didn’t have the “sp” following it, the cinnamon did, and the rest were all lower case “tsp” – hence my confusion on the cinnamon.