Cinnamon Biscuits without the Drive Thru Line

We're fans of Jiffy Buttermilk Biscuit Mix. The biscuits are great whether made with water, milk, or, best of all, buttermilk. They're good plain, baked with chunks of cheese in them, or as fluffy soup dumplings.  But on a weekend morning they are great for cinnamon biscuits.

Ingredients:

• 1 8-oz. box buttermilk biscuit mix
• 1/2 cup water, milk, or buttermilk
• 4 Tablespoons butter, melted
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1-2 Tablespoons flour
• 2 wedges Laughing Cow Lite Swiss Cheese (alternatively use cream cheese or Neufchatel)
• 2 Tablespoons milk
• 3 Tablespoons powdered sugar

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 400°F
2. Mix biscuit mix and water until the mix is moistened
3. Roll the biscuit mix out into a 12-inch square
4. Mix the melted butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, and flour into a paste and spread it out on the square of dough
5. Roll the square up and use the palms of your hands to flatten the ends so that it is a neat cylinder
6. Cut into 8 slices and place them in an ungreased pie plate, baking pan, or glass cake pan.
7. Bake 10-12 minutes.
8. Mix the cheese, milk and powdered sugar into a loose glaze.  Spoon this over the  hot biscuits.
9. When cool enough to "inhale" them, do so.

Easy Almond Crescent Shortbread Cookies

My mom's recipe for almond crescents made a 5-dozen cookie batch and would require wrestling the stand mixer to the counter. So, I've experimented with 1/2 a batch using the food processor. Makes 1 cookie-sheet full of cookies (2 dozen + a couple).

Ingredients:

• 1/2 + 1/3 cups (5/6 cup)flour
• 1/2 cup blanched slivered almonds
• scant 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 tsp. salt (less if you use salted butter or margarine)
• 1 stick unsalted butter, slightly softened but still colder than room temperature
• 1/2 cup or as needed powdered sugar

Procedure:

1. Pulse flour, almonds, sugar & salt in the food processor until the ingredients are well mixed and the almonds are chopped.
2. Add the stick of butter cut into pieces.
3. Pulse and whir until it moves past the crumb stage and starts to form a dough.
4. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350°F
5. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper
6. Using a knife, cut the dough into about 2 dozen small pieces and roll each into 2 1/2 inch logs and shape each into a crescent.  If some of the cookies are larger than others, pinch off the excess and form the scraps into additional cookies.
7. Bake 15-18 minutes until golden with slightly browner edges.
8. Let cool on the paper.
9. When cool, roll each in powdered sugar.

Over the years, I've found that parchment paper is the solution for great cookies.  I have had lousy luck with cookie sheets and have scraped char off the bottoms of many a cookie.  A layer of parchment solves this problem!  Magic!  Golden brown cookie bottoms!

Almond Crescents: Christmas Cookies My Mom Made

Tis the season for cookies!  But I think it would be healthier for me if I wrote about them more than making & eating them.  Everybody grew up with different Christmas cookies.  In some cases, the cookies were similar but the names were different.  My mom's Snickerdoodles were pretty much identical to my friend's mom's Snippernoodles.  (Snippernoodles!  Harrumph.  What a silly name.  Snickerdoodles is obviously a better name. ☺)

So, in the spirit of the season, thought I'd share some from my mom's recipe box. As she will want me to point out, she didn't invent the recipes but the sources are lost to history.

So, here's the first in a series of Christmas cookie recipes: Almond Crescents!  This results in a very short, rich, small but satisfying cookie.  I can smell and taste them as I type.  Such memories!

Ingredients (to yield about 5 dozen cookies):

• 1 2/3 cups sifted flour
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1 cup shortening (The recipe, in handwriting that might be my paternal grandmother's, specifies 1/2 Spry shortening, 1/4 butter, and 1/4 margarine but we almost always made them using all margarine.)
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 2/3 cup ground blanched almonds
• 1 cup confectioner's sugar

Procedure:

1. Sift together flour and salt
2. Cream shortening (butter, margarine) with the granulated sugar
3. Add almonds and flour, mixing well
4. Chill the dough for 30 minutes or more
5. Preheat oven to 350°F
6. Roll the dough into 1/2" diameter rolls, 2 1/2 inches long
7. Place the rolls on an ungreased cookie sheet and bend to ressemble crescents
8. Bake 15 minutes and allow to cool on the sheet
9. When cool, roll in confectioner's sugar

Yummy.  Maybe I will make 1/2 a batch before the season's over ...

Easy Baklava made with Walnuts, Sesame Seeds & Olive Oil

Making baklava is surprisingly easy.  When made with olive oil, it's also vegan, which is important for one of tomorrow's guests.  Although often made with butter, making baklava with olive oil instead is also traditional because it is in line with religious eating traditions in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East from whence it comes.

The phyllo:

• "No one" makes phyllo dough from scratch.  For fun, check out this video showing how it's made. Widely distributed brands like Athens Fillo are found in the freezer aisle of the supermarket.  This recipe calls for half a 1-pound box (1 sleeve of 2) which means we will have the other half to make savory turnovers with some leftover Thanksgiving turkey later in the weekend. The other sleeve of dough will keep a good long time in the freezer if we eat all the turkey first.

The Olive Oil Pump:

• I find the easiest way to distribute oil on the phyllo sheets is to use a sprayer.  I have a Pampered Chef kitchen spritzer I've nursed along for years but there are also lots of similar beasts on Amazon.  Don't expect an oil pump to make a fine aerosol but they do a good job of making a little oil go a long way.  I keep mine filled by the stove and use it whenever I want to keep things from sticking.  When it clogs, I soak its parts in hot water and detergent and then run them through the dishwasher.  

Ingredients for the base:

• ½ pound of phyllo dough, thawed as explained on the package
• 1 pound shelled walnuts
• 8 ounces sesame seeds
• 1 Tablespoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground cloves
• ½ cup sugar
  
• olive oil to moisten phyllo

Ingredients for the syrup:

• 1 cup honey
• 1 cup water
• ½ cup sugar
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• juice of one lemon

Procedure:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.   
2. Finely chop the walnuts (about 20 brief pulses of a food processor)
3. Mix walnuts, sesame seeds, cinnamon, cloves, and ½ cup sugar in a dry bowl.
4. Lay a sheet of phyllo on the floor of a 9"x13" glass baking pan.
5. Spritz with oil.  You needn't soak the sheet with oil -- just a light spritz.
   
6. Repeat until your have a base of 4 spritzed sheets.
7. Cover with 1/3 nut mixture.
8. Repeat 4 sheets of phyllo, spritzing each, and 1/3 nuts twice more.
9. Cover with and spritz each of the remaining sheets of phyllo.
10. With a very sharp knife, cut into 1½" squares or diamonds.  It is important this be done before baking.
11. Bake 40 minutes.
12. As the phyllo and nuts finish baking, simmer the syrup ingredients for 10 minutes in a non-reactive pan.
13. Discard the cinnamon sticks and spoon the hot syrup over the hot baklava in its pan, making sure to cover the entire top.
14. Let rest to stick together.

This baklava is drier and crumblier than others you might have had.  I find it less cloying than some.  You may want to make more syrup to have a wetter pastry.

You can easily replace the walnuts and/or sesame seeds with other nuts, seeds or dried fruit to your taste.

And, of course, you could gild the lily by serving it warmed with vanilla ice cream ... but not tomorrow.  Our guest is vegan and it's bad enough we're going to eat turkey in front of her!

No Knead Cinnamon Buns with Laughing Cow Icing

A friend called recently to wax rhapsodic about the cinnamon he ordered from Penzey's.  Being about out of cinnamon myself, I decided to place an order.  We're celebrating the arrival of the box with cinnamon buns made using the no-knead bread method to start.  Yummy!

Ingredients:

• 4 generous cups bread flour, all-purpose flour, or a combination
• 1 ½ tsp. salt
• ½ cup granulated sugar, divided
• 1 envelope rapid-rise yeast
• 2 cups water
• ¼ cup butter (sweet or salted according to your taste)
  
• 1 Tbl. cinnamon.  I used Penzey's Korintje Indonesia Cinnamon.
• 2 wedges Laughing Cow Light Swiss Original cheese (or 1½-2 ounces cream cheese)
• 2 Tbl. milk
• ¾-1 cup confectioner's (powdered) sugar

Procedure:

1. Combine flour, salt, half the granulated sugar (¼ cup), and yeast in a large bowl.
2. Stir in the two cups water to make a ragged dough.
3. Cover and let sit 4-6 hours to rise.
4.  On a slick, well-floured surface with a well-floured rolling pin, shape the dough into a rectangle and roll until ¼" thick.
5. Melt the butter and brush it on the dough rectangle.
6. Sprinkle the cinnamon and the remaining ¼ cup of granulated sugar on the rectangle.
7. Starting with the edge closest to you, roll the dough up as you would a bedroll.
8. Slice the rolled dough into 1-1½" slices.
9. Arrange the slices cut side up in greased 2-3 inch deep baking dishes. You can either space them or place them next to each other depending on whether you want them flatter and crisper or soft and pull-apart.
10. Let rise 1-2 hours until doubled in size.
11. Bake in a pre-heated 350 degree oven until golden, 30-40 minutes.
12. Mix the cheese, confectioner's sugar, and milk to make a loose icing and distribute this over the still hot rolls.  
13. Let cool in the pans.

This makes a light, tender cinnamon roll.

Fig Balsamic Sauce

My next door neighbor, the one who keeps me supplied with basil, offered me some fresh figs from the tree at her family farm. They were fresh and ripe and ready to be made into a sauce. Figs with balsamic vinegar is an italian classic. This sauce starts with that idea and some inspiration from epicurean.com, among others.
The aim is small containers of sauce that can be stored in the freezer and taken out to perk up a chicken breast or pork chop with some fruity goodness. It will be a good sauce for fruits, vegetables and salads, too. Drizzle some over chunks of good parmesan for a sumptuous appetizer or as part of a cheese course.

I imagine you could do this with dried figs, rehydrated with hot water, if fresh figs are not at hand. How about a sliced strawberry with a little stream of this and a tiny glass of champagne as an amuse-bouche? Over a lychee? Cauliflower! I'm salivating here!

Ingredients: 1 cup fresh figs, stemmed and quartered 1 sweet onion, roughly chopped needles from 2 sprigs rosemary 6-8 whole cloves 2 Tbl. olive oil 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar 1/2 cup honey
Procedure: In a non-reactive saucepan, sweat the onion, rosemary and cloves in the olive oil over low heat until the onions are soft but not colored. Add the figs, vinegar and honey and bring to a simmer.
Let simmer on medium low for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Turn off the heat and let the mixture steep for 20 to 30 minutes.
Whir briefly with an immersion blender or in the food processor and strain through a screen to remove the biggest pieces of skin, rosemary and cloves.
Using a rubber spatula, stir the sauce against the screen until only the dry parts are left behind.
I used a turkey baster to squirt the resulting sauce into 2 oz. containers I picked up at a party store, filling 12 containers with enough sauce left over for the cook, me, to have over some fruit before I tackle cleaning up.

Cinnamon Crumb Cake

When I first moved away from Connecticut in the 1970s, I longed for the cinnamon snack cakes that weren’t available in my new home. So, with much trial and error, I developed this recipe for a dense and moist cinnamon crumb cake. It’s best made with a stand mixer and baked in a bundt pan. It’s a firm cake more akin to a coffee cake or pound cake. It travels well. If you need to carry a cake to work, this one can be stood up on its side in a book bag without falling apart!

Preheat oven to 350° Farenheit.

BATTER

Add ingredients one at a time. Mix thoroughly between each addition.

• 1 stick margarine, softened
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• Zest of 1 lemon
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 8 oz. sour cream

Sift together:

• 3 cups of flour (measure the 3 cups before sifting)
• 5 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt

Alternate adding dry ingredients to mixer with

• 1/4 cup milk

Mix together thoroughly. Batter should be almost thick enough to creep up the beaters.

CRUMBS

Work with your fingers:

• 1 stick margarine
• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 3 Tbl Cinnamon

The crumb mixture will resemble moist beach sand.

ASSEMBLY

1. Grease & flour the bundt pan.
2. Layer in 1/3 crumbs, 1/2 batter, 1/3 crumbs, 1/2 batter, 1/3 crumbs.
3. Pat gently to seal the last layer of crumbs to the batter.
4. Bake about 40 minutes.
5. Let the cake cool at least 30 minutes before removing it from the pan.
6. Slice to serve.