yogurt spelt biscuits

Oh hi there, my dear friends over at my little corner of the Internet. Long time no see, eh? Apologies. Turns out there was a big meeting of geology nerds in town last week. I had been excited for this week since I moved here in August of 2007. I never realized how deeply involved I would get with organizing things for the meeting as I did. It was an awesome conference, and I rallied myself socially for FIVE days in a row! I then helped out with a post-conference workshop in my lab. All in all, the week was educational, intense, and nerdtastic. At times, I felt like a real scientist, which is weird, because I generally feel like too much of a noob to really be a part of the scientific community. All part of growing up, maybe?

I was also totally exhausted afterwards. I usually get all stressed out if I invite a dozen people over to our apartment, and as it turns out inviting all the geoscientists to my beloved city was just as proportionally stressy. There was also no time for cooking and/or blogging. As you may know, after about two days of travelling or whatever, I get pretty antsy if I'm not cooking. This past weekend has been spent reacquainting myself with my kitchen and participating in a little social detox. I've probably talked more to my dog and cat than any human in the past two days (husband included -- he was at the lab all day Saturday). I made a curry, pancakes, and spent way too much time trying out bulgur wheat for breakfast.

I also made biscuits, and photographed them for you! So let's get back to our regularly scheduled blog post, shall we? Turns out we go through yogurt in this household at a pretty unreasonable pace. For once, we've accidentally overbought it (unprecedented!), and I wanted to try and use up the embarrassingly large quantity of plain yogurt taking up space in my fridge. This is another creation from Super Natural Every Day by Heidi Swanson. They are surprisingly soft for a biscuit, and I love the flavor of the spelt. I would say they are almost salty too, so consider the salt added here as an upper limit. I would also like to let you know that bench scrapers are totally the bomb. The Oxo one is a favorite of America's Test Kitchen, and I agree that the engraved ruler on the side of it is totally critical. I don't know about you, but if someone tells me my biscuit dough should be 3/4" tall, I will be totally vigilant about it. And while I've got your attention, I want you to know that weighing your flour is the way to go. There are so many slick little kitchen scales out there (In other words, all the new ones that look like iPads. Oh man! Can there be an app for this??), so why not be super accurate about it?

Yogurt Spelt Biscuits
makes 12 biscuits

5 oz. spelt flour
5.5 oz unbleached all-purpose flour
1 1/2 t. kosher salt
1 T. baking powder
1/2 c. unsalted butter, cold and cut into little cubes
11 oz(~1 1/3 c.) Greek yogurt

Preheat the oven to 450 F with a rack in the middle of the oven. Place an ungreased baking sheet in the oven to preheat as well.

Combine the flours, salt, and baking powder in a food processor. Sprinkle the butter across the top of the dry ingredients and pulse about 20 times, or until the mixture resembles tiny pebbles on a sandy beach. [The words of HS, not me! Such romantic food processing!] Add the yogurt and pulse a few times, or until the yogurt is just incorporated. Gather the dough into a ball and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead five times and press into an inch-thick square. Cut in half and stack one on the other. Repeat two more times -- flattening, stacking, and cutting. [This encourages a layered biscuit that's easy to pull apart] Add more all-purpose flour to prevent sticking when needed. Press or roll out the dough into a 3/4 inch thick rectangle, but no thicker; if the dough is too tall, the biscuits will tilt and tip over while baking. Cut the dough into twelve equal biscuits.

Transfer the biscuits to the preheated caking sheet, leaving 1/2 inch between biscuits. Bake for 15-18 minutes, until the bottoms are deeply golden and the biscuits are cooked through.

Don't know what to do with your biscuits? I decided to wilt some kale and toss it in with some delicious scrambled eggs. Breakfast for dinner, yay!

almond-orange biscuits

Well it sure seems like food-with-strawberries-on-top is my theme for blog pictures at the moment. My husband and I have a deal that as long as strawberries are cheap, we are going to keep buying them and eating them, and there will be no complaining. I know that two months from now we'll be sad little puppies when we see the cost of them, and we'll be stuck with frozen strawberries to put in smoothies until next June. So yeah, no complaining!

These biscuits were a part of a series of new recipes that I tried that required as little cooking as possible. We had a really stupid heat wave here, and our tower fan in the kitchen can only do so much. Ambient temperature in the apartment never really dropped below 85 F during the day for a week or so. Gross! We made cold soba noodles (the only cook time is a 5-minute noodle boil), potato salad with white and green beans (15 minutes of boiling time total), smoothies (natch!), and another cold salad that I promise to post as soon as I've got the pictures uploaded properly. The biscuits are a quick bake, so it isn't too bad if you really, really want to bake something. Plus you can always leave the room while baking something, perhaps to go take an ice cold shower, right? All in all, perhaps it was good that I was forced to try out some new recipes, even if conditions were less than fun. It was, however, definitely good that my husband reminded me that daiquiris go down especially well when it is so danged hot outside too. :)

So I didn't take a picture of this, but for serving, I recommend a nice goat cheese (the one I had was a honey-goat cheese) with some balsamic vinegar as well. If I'd remembered to clip some leaves from our mint plant, I would have sliced those up and tossed them in too. Don't tell me that I have fancy pants, because I really don't.

Almond-Orange Biscuits
adapted from Pecan-Orange Biscuits in 1,000 Vegetarian Recipes by Carol Gelles

1 1/4 c. all-purpose flour
3/4 c. whole wheat flour
1/2 c. ground almonds
2 T. sugar
1 T. baking powder (yes, really!)
1/2 t. salt
3 T. butter
3/4 c. orange juice (uhhh, I took the grated orange and blended it. That's OJ, right?)
1 T. orange rind
2-3 large strawberries, cut into thin slices perpendicular to the stem

1. Preheat oven to 400 F. PAM a cookie sheet covered in foil. (I can has Silpat?)
2. In a large bowl, stir together both flours, the pecans, sugar, baking powder, and salt.
3. Using a pastry blender (yes! I mostly use mine as a potato masher!) or two knives, cut the butter until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal.
4. Stir together the orange juice and the orange rind. Add to the flour mixture and stir until juice is absorbed.
5. Knead in the bowl 10-12 times until dough forms a ball. Roll out the dough to 1/2-inch thickness and cut with 3-inch biscuit cutters and place on prepared baking sheet. (These are the official directions. I pushed the dough evenly into an 8x10 Pyrex and cut the biscuits into 2 1/2 inch squares instead.)
6. Place a strawberry slice on top and push into the biscuit a bit.

7. Bake 18-20 minutes or until lightly browned on top.

one for the pups: cream cheese dog biscuits

     I've pretty much owned my kitchen this weekend. It's so funny,  I can't seem to find the balance of fun activities like I should. You know, friend time + cooking + crafting. But noooooo. I have just been blasting through all the clean dishes at a most impressive rate. At least I got some sweet photos so I can post some stuff here...

So I decided to bake some treats for my dog. I've been really excited about using my new cookie cutters, so this opportunity was too much fun to pass up. Here, check out our silly gingerfolks:

We're trying to get away from buying treats so much. When Tess was a puppy, we went through treats like it was going out of style -- such is life with a growing pup going through obedience class. So now we want to cool it with having so many kinds in the house. And really, I'm sure making them ourselves is going to be the cheapest option. Her enthusiasm for devouring homemade treats is encouraging as well.

Here's my dog showing off for a cookie. Her default move in hopes of getting the cookie faster is the 'solid sit':

Oh, the anticipation!!!

Easy Cream Cheese Dog Biscuits

from You Bake 'Em Dog Biscuits Cookbook

Ingredients:

2 1/4 t. dry yeast (one package)

1/4 c. warm water (100-110 F)

2 1/3 c. whole wheat flour, plus more for rolling

1/4 c. unsweetened applesauce

4 oz. cream cheese (leave it out to soften beforehand)

1 egg

1/4 c. powdered milk, plus extra for rolling

1 t. garlic powder 

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.

2. Dissolve the yeast in a large bowl. Combine with all ingredients and mix into the dough (I used a hand mixer, adding the flour 1/2 c. at a time). 

3. Roll out onto a floured surface to 1/4 inch thickness. 

4. Sprinkle dough with extra dry milk to make it easier to roll out.

5. Cut into shapes with your favorite cookie cutters.

6. Place biscuits on a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper (note: I am getting silicone mats for the next round of these -- it's handy that dogs won't judge you if the bottoms of their cookies are a little too dark!! So be sure to check on them.).

7. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a light, golden brown.

8. Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator.