This may well be my favorite meal.  At least, it has all the components of a few of my favorite things.  A creamy, rich tomato soup and a biscuit, packed with the flavors of pimento cheese.  A match made in heaven, a pairing perfect for the gloomy cold of January.

First off, the combination of two Southern favorites – the buttermilk biscuit and pimento cheese – is ingenious.  It truly came to me in the most obvious of ways, like those old peanut butter cup commercials.  Standing in front of the open fridge door the night of a holiday brunch party years ago, I spread some pimento cheese on a leftover biscuit, and it hit me that I could save that pesky spreading step and create a one-bite wonder.  So I went to work. I doubt I was the first person to think of this, but that’s how I got here.  These gems are the perfect pairing for a bowl of soup, but it doesn’t end there.  A dab of butter and a little country ham.  A dab of butter and some crispy bacon.  Make that candied bacon and you are on your way to heaven.  I sometimes make these in little cocktail size bites and serve them at parties, either with butter alone, or something yummy tucked inside.  I am sure you will find all sorts of ways to enjoy these.

And tomato soup is perhaps the world’s most perfect food.  All at once a source of memory and comfort yet infinitely malleable and always new.  A good, simple tomato soup recipe is a cornerstone of the kitchen, and this version fits that bill.  It is a cinch to whip up but full of flavor.  The best thing about a recipe like this, about making your own tomato soup, is that you know exactly what’s in it. No extra sodium, no MSG, no unpronounceable preservatives, just good, honest food. Use quality canned tomatoes, preserved at their peak of freshness, with no added salt or unnecessaries, and you can have this soup anytime. I wouldn’t frown on using frozen diced onions to shorten the prep time.  And of course, this is simply seasoned with basil and garlic, but let your mind run wild – any herbs or seasonings that take your fancy.  I personally like a smooth soup, so I use the immersion blender, but if chunky is your thing, go for it.

Pimento Cheese Biscuits

I generally cut these into squares to avoid wasting or re-rolling dough, but if you prefer, you can cut them into rounds as you would a regular biscuit.  Grate the cheese fresh – pre-grated uses an anti-caking agent.

2 cups all-purpose flour, plus a bit for sprinkling

1 Tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon sweet paprika

½ teaspoon garlic powder

¾ cup (1 ½ sticks) butter, cold

½ cup buttermilk, well-shaken and cold, plus a little for brushing

1 egg

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1 (4-ounce) jar diced pimentos, drained and patted dry

1 cup grated extra sharp cheddar cheese

Sea salt for sprinkling, I prefer Maldon

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Put the flour, baking powder, salt, paprika and garlic powder in the bowl of a stand mixer and stir together with a fork.  Cut the butter into small cubes and drop them in the flour. Using the paddle attachment, blend the butter and flour on low speed until the butter is the size of small BBs.  You want some butter blended in, but the visible small pieces of butter help make the biscuits fluffy.

Measure the buttermilk in a measuring jug, crack in the egg, add the Worcestershire sauce, and beat it with a fork until the egg is well blended.  Keep the mixer on low, dump in the buttermilk and blend just until everything is moist.  Toss the cheese with a little flour, and do the same to the pimentos. This step keeps the cheese and pimentos from clumping together so they blend throughout the dough.  Drop them both in the mixer and, still on low, beat until everything just starts to come together.

Dump the dough onto a well-floured surface and gently bring it all together, kneading just a few times.  Handle with care and don’t overwork the dough, or the biscuits will get tough.  A few pimentos may stick to the board or fall out, just stick ‘em back in.  Pat the dough into a rectangle about 6 by 10 inches, using the back of a large knife or bench scraper to square off the ends.  Flour the knife or scraper and cut the dough into eight squares.  Place the biscuits on the prepared baking sheet, lightly brush the tops with a little buttermilk and sprinkle with sea salt.

Bake the biscuits for 15 – 20 minutes, until lightly browned and cooked through. Serve warm, or wrap tightly and store in an airtight container, gently reheat before serving.

Makes 8 biscuits

Creamy Tomato Soup

The addition of baking soda prevents the soup from curdling.  I prefer good Italian canned San Marzano tomatoes, with no salt or additives.

2 Tablespoons olive oil

1 small onion, or 3 shallots, diced

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1 Tablespoon tomato paste

28-ounce can diced tomatoes

1 bunch fresh basil, finely chopped

¼ teaspoon baking soda

3 ½ cups whole milk

Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the olive oil in a large Dutch oven over medium heat, then add the onions and sauté until soft and translucent, but not browning.  Drop in the garlic and sauté for a few minutes more.  Stir in the tomato paste and diced tomatoes and stir.  Add the basil. Stir well, bring to a boil, then lower the heat to a steady simmer.  If you prefer a smooth soup, with an immersion blender, or very carefully in a blender in batches, puree the soup base until smooth.

Mix the baking soda with a splash of milk in a small bowl to form a paste.  Scrape the paste into the soup, then quickly pour in the milk and stir.  The soup will foam up, and that’s fine, it will subside.  Heat the soup to until warm throughout, but do not let it boil.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.

The soup will keep covered in the fridge for up to two days, but will not freeze.  Reheat gently but do not boil.

Serves 6 in small bowls, four in big ones

January is National Soup Month and I have been celebrating in style, and passing my favorite recipes along to you.  And what could be better with a bowl of soup than a grilled cheese sandwich of some sort.  Now, I will readily admit to being a fan of the individually wrapped cheese slice on white bread version, but it is occasionally nice to step out of the ordinary.  So here’s an Italian version of the grilled cheese. Mozzarella in Carrozza, which literally means “cheese in a carriage,” the carriage being the crispy carapace of egg around the sandwich. It’s rich, gooey on the inside and crispy on the outside – everything a grilled cheese should be. It may be a little bit more involved to make, but the pay-off is well worth it. Try it with a bowl of Roasted Vegetable Stracciatella for a true Italian feel.

This has to be made with fresh mozzarella cheese, which is so readily available now, not the pre-grated “pizza cheese.” I’ve tried lots of versions of this, but eventually realized that grating the cheese gives you a better melt than slices, which is the traditional method.  And the mozzarella needs lots of salt and good grinding of pepper to bring out the flavor.

Mozzarella in Carrozza

Half a sandwich with a bowl of soup can be enough for one person, but feel free to increase the recipe as you like.

1 8-ounce ball fresh mozzarella cheese

4 slices firm white sandwich bread

Salt and freshly ground pepper

½ cup milk

4 Tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 egg

Grate the cheese on the wide holes of a box grater.  At some point this process really becomes just pushing the cheese through the holes as the cheese comes apart, but do your best.  Remove the crusts from the sandwich bread and place the cheese over two slices.  Leave a small margin around the edge of the bread.  Generously season the cheese with salt and pepper.  Place the top slices of bread over the sandwiches, the press the edges together to seal.

Place a wide bowl and two small flat plates on the counter.  Pour the milk in the bowl, beat the egg in one plate, and place the flour in the second.  Coat the bottom of a frying pan with olive oil and heat over medium heat.

Dip the first sandwich in the milk, turning to coat both sides and the edges, then dip the sandwich into the flour to coat both sides.  Shake the sandwich to loosen any excess flour, then dip in the egg, turning to coat both sides.  Fry the sandwich in the hot oil until crispy and brown and melty, turning to cook both sides. Repeat with the remaining sandwich.  Let the cooked sandwiches sit for about a minute, then slice into halves and serve.

Serves 2 – 4

I have stumbled across this recipe in many community cookbooks over the years, and after seeing it so many times, I just had to try it to see if it’s for real.  It’s so easy, I had a suspicion it was too good to be true.  But, lo and behold, it works.

I have seen the recipes titled cream cheese biscuits and cream cheese wafers, but neither is really completely accurate. These are really a combination of the two.  It’s a little difficult to describe, they’re crumbly and soft, but develop a crispy outside.  The cream cheese adds tang, and the butter richness.  The lazy lady’s food processor method is my own twist, but makes this simple recipe even quicker.  These little gems are the perfect sidecar to a bowl of soup, and so quick to whip up at the last minute, I bet they become a regular in your repertoire.

Cream Cheese Wafer Biscuits

The logs of dough will keep in the fridge for up to a week, so slice off what you want to bake and re-wrap the remaining dough.

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened

8 ounces cream cheese, softened

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

Cut the butter and the cream cheese into chunks and drop into the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade.  Process for a few seconds to combine the two.  Add the flour and salt, and process until the dough comes together in a ball.  Divide the dough into two equal portions, and plop each ball onto a piece of waxed paper.  Form into logs about 2 inches in diameter, and roll tightly in the paper, twisting the end like candy wrappers. Refrigerate until firm, for a least two hours.

When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Slice the dough rolls into biscuits about ½ -inch thick and place on the baking sheet.  Bake until firm and lightly golden on the edges, about 10 – 12 minutes. Cool before serving.

Makes about 24

I spend the vast majority of my time creating recipes.  Thinking about ideas, how to make them work, what I want to cook, what I want to eat, how to share the idea. And people often ask me about my process.  Sometimes ideas pop into my head fully formed, but more often, like this recipe, it’s by trial, error and a certain determination that there is a good idea somewhere in there. So here it goes.

Ionce saw a recipe for a “sausage cake” in a very old community cookbook, where the recipes where still in the handwriting of the contributors, and the idea of a savory breakfast cake intrigued me.  That recipe, however, was horrible – dry and tasteless and tough.  But the idea of a savory coffee cake, if you will, stuck with me.  First, I thought sausage folded into a plain muffin batter in a cake form, but that idea fell flat.  Boring.  Adding an onion the next time around helped, but it was the cake that was the real problem.  I fiddled with a lot of ideas to boost the flavor, from cornmeal to yogurt or sour cream, but those never hit the mark.  When I had practically given up on the idea, mayonnaise hit me as a way to add tenderness and a little tang, like the chocolate cake made with mayonnaise that has an indefinable quality that sets it apart.  So batter fixed.  Cheese was the next obvious addition, and I started with cheddar.  Good, but not interesting.  I also needed to add a layer of complimentary flavor, and herbs were the obvious choice.  I resisted sage at first, because sausage and sage are such a ubiquitous combination.  But my forays into other herbs just weren’t right.  I finally admitted that there is a reason sausage and sage are used together so often – they work.  That led me back to the cheese.  With the woody note of sage, cheddar was suddenly more interesting and complimentary.  Done.

In this case, the process has been ongoing for several years, not a constant trial.  It probably took ten trys before I hit the right recipe, and then made that several times to be sure. This idea of a savory breakfast cake just stuck with me, and I would return to it time and time again, making notes on my original notebook page.  That’s where I start.  I have a spiral notebook that I write recipes in, erasing, making notes, jotting ideas, instructions for changes next time.  I also have a dedicated group of recipe testers – family and friends – as I get close to where I want to be, they sample and make suggestions (or just tell me it’s no good).  When I hit the point where I like the result, and they like the result.  I know I’m there.

Savory Sausage Breakfast Cake

This is best served shortly after baking, though it’s fine at room temperature.  If you want quick prep for breakfast, cook the sausage and onions and toss with the sage and cheese the night before, cover and refrigerate.  Add the egg, make the batter and bake in the morning.

1 pound ground sausage

½ cup chopped onion

1 cup finely grated cheddar cheese

1 teaspoon chopped fresh sage leaves

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

¾ cup milk

¼ cup mayonnaise

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Grease an 8 by 8 inch baking dish.

Break the sausage into pieces and place in a skillet.  Cook the sausage until it is beginning to brown and has rendered some of its fat, breaking it into small pieces as you cook.   Add the onion and continue to cook until the sausage is browned and no longer pink in the middle and the onions are soft.  Drain well and leave to cool slightly.

Place the cooled sausage and onion into a bowl and add the cheddar cheese and sage.  Toss to combine.  Add the lightly beaten egg and stir to mix everything together well.

In another bowl, stir the flour, baking powder and baking soda together with a fork.  Add the milk and mayonnaise and stir with the fork to combine.  Pour 1/2 of the batter into the prepared pan and spread to cover the bottom.  Spread the sausage and cheese mixture evenly over the batter in the pan, then spread the remaining batter over the top.  Do the best you can, but it will not cover the top of the sausage mixture and that’s fine.

Bake the cake for 20 – 25 minutes until firm and golden.  Serve warm.

Serves 8- 9

A good corn muffin is a thing of beauty. The perfect accompaniment to a bowl of soup or a supper salad, and so comforting passed around the table in a basket while still warm. Slather on a little butter, and you’ve got a bite of heaven, my friend.

These tender corn muffins have the added attraction of crispy bacon and intense, chewy fresh corn kernels. The tang of buttermilk and sour cream is balanced by the sweetness of honey. Try these with Tomato Soup Base or Roasted Carrot and Cumin Soup.

Toasted Corn and Bacon Muffins
Toasting the corn kernels gives them a more intense flavor and a great texture.

Kernels from one cob of fresh corn (about ½ cup)
4 strips of bacon
1 egg
1 (8-ounce) container sour cream
1 ½ cups buttermilk
2 Tablespoons honey
1 ½ cups yellow corn meal
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

Place the corn kernels in a dry skillet and toast over medium heat, tossing and stirring frequently, until the kernels are beginning to brown and dry out. Keep the kernels moving. The color of the corn will intensify as well. This will take 7- 8 minutes. Transfer the toasted kernels to a bowl.

Rinse and dry the skillet, then cook the bacon strips until brown and very crispy. Drain the bacon on paper towels, and reserve the bacon grease. Crumble the bacon into small pieces.

In a large bowl, whisk together the egg, sour cream, buttermilk and honey. Mix the corn meal, flour, baking powder and salt in another small bowl, then add to the dry ingredients. Stir until just mixed. Stir in the corn kernels and bacon pieces.

Spoon about a teaspoon of bacon grease into each cup of a 12-hole muffin tin. Swirl it around a little, then place the tin in the oven. Heat for about 5 minutes, until the bacon grease is sizzling. Remove the time from the oven, and quickly divide the batter between the cups (I find an ice cream or ¼ cup cookie scoop a good tool for this). Return the pan to the oven, and bake for 10- 12 minutes, until the muffins are golden and a tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Loosen the muffin edges with a thin knife blade, leave to cool in the pans for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Makes 12 muffins

My love for biscuits has been well and truly established.  And though I will never turn away from a classic Southern buttermilk biscuit, piping hot, slathered with butter, I do occasionally like to veer off the path a bit – but not too far! But with summer blueberry bounty in full swing, I decided to combine my love of biscuits and blueberries for a trip away from the standard muffin.

Blueberry Biscuits

I like a nice big biscuit, but feel free to cut them into smaller squares, just adjust the cooking time accordingly and watch carefully.

2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

½ cup sugar

1/3 cup cold shortening

¾ cup buttermilk, well-shaken

1 egg

½ cup fresh blueberries

3 Tablespoons butter

2 Tablespoons sugar

¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Grease a baking sheet.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar.  Cut the shortening into pieces and drop in the mixer. Mix until the flour and shortening are blended together and look grainy.

Measure out the buttermilk and crack in the egg.  Beat lightly to blend.  With mixer running, add the buttermilk to the dry ingredients and mix until the dough comes together.  It will be a soft, floppy dough.

Turn the dough out onto a well-floured board and sprinkle a little flour over the top.  With well-floured hands, knead in the blueberries, doing your best to distribute them throughout the dough.  If the dough is too wet to work with, you can work in a little more flour, but this is meant to be a sticky dough.  With floured hands, gently pat the dough into a rectangle about 4 by 8 inches.  Flour a knife or bench scraper and cut the dough into eight squares.  Carefully transfer the biscuits to the greased baking sheet. 

Bake the biscuits until risen and golden on the edges, 8 – 12 minutes, watching closely.

While the biscuits are cooking, melt the butter in a small saucepan or the microwave.  Stir in the sugar and nutmeg until you have a thick paste.  The sugar will not dissolve completely.

When the biscuits are done, remove from the oven and immediately brush the tops with the butter and sugar mixture.  Coat the biscuits well, but you may not use all the topping.  Leave to cool on the pan.

Because of the sweet buttery, sugary topping, these biscuits do not keep well, so it’s best to make them the day you plan to serve.

Makes 8 biscuits

I have waxed poetic about my love for fresh blackberries before, with my Tennessee Blackberry Jam Cake, and at this time of year, when the big juicy berries are all over the farmers markets, I can hardly resist.  I find that I buy way more than I can consume on their own, sprinkled with a little sugar.  Luckily, they are amazing in baked goods like these tender muffins.  A generous grating of orange zest and a good dose of orange juice are a perfect foil for the sweet-tart berries, subtle but not overpowering.

Turbinado sugar is a large-grained raw light brown sugar that is perfect for spinkling over baked goods, as it gives a sweet, crackly finish.  You can find turbinado sugar in bulk at many stores, so buy just enough to keep on hand for baking.  You can use plain white granulated sugar here, but it won’t give the same crunchy, rich top.

Blackberry Orange Muffins

Paper liners are best with these muffins, as some berries will stick to the side of the pan.

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 Tablespoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup granulated sugar

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

Grated rind of one orange

1 egg

½ cup butter, melted and cooled

½ cup fresh orange juice (from 1 – 2 navel oranges)

2 cups fresh blackberries

Turbinado or granulated sugar for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Line 12 muffin cups with paper liners.

In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, nutmeg and orange rind together with a fork to combine and aerate.  In another bowl, lightly beat the egg, then add the melted butter and orange juice.  Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients, pour in the wet ingredients and gently fold until just mixed.  For a light muffin, don’t over mix.  A few streaks of dry ingredients is okay at this point.  Gently fold in the blackberries.

Divide the batter between the prepared muffin cups.  Sprinkle the tops of each muffin generously with a nice topping of turbinado sugar.  Bake the muffins for 15- 20 minutes, until puffed and golden and a tested inserted in the center comes out with a few crumbs clinging to it.  Cool the muffins in the pan for 3 minutes, then remove to a wire rack to cool.

 Makes 12 muffins

I remember a delicious quick bread popular when I was kid, sweet and cinnamony with nice pockets of gooey strawberry.  I think I even remember making it myself at some point.  So I went looking for recipes, and they all contained frozen berries in syrup – some even used cake mix or pudding mix.  But I thought surely I could do better than that.  Fresh, in-season, local strawberries are one of life’s great pleasures, so why muck them up with chemicals and additives and fake gunk.

So here is my new result – sweet, fresh, spiced bread perfect for breakfast, or tea, or even dessert. 

Fresh Strawberry Bread

10 ounces stemmed and sliced fresh strawberries

1 cup plus 3 Tablespoons granulated sugar

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

2 eggs

½ cup vegetable oil

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

Sliced the strawberries and place in a bowl.  Sprinkle over the 3 Tablespoons of sugar and toss to thoroughly coat the berries.  Leave to macerate for several hours, until there is plenty of juice at the bottom of the bowl. Drain the berries, reserving the juice.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Grease an 8 ½ x 4 ½ x 3 inch loaf pan.

Mix the flour, remaining 1 cup sugar, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a large bowl.  Add the eggs, vegetable oil and vanilla and mix until just combined.  Fold in the drained strawberry slices, distributing evenly.  Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until a tester inserted in the middle of the loaf comes out clean.

Remove the loaf from the oven and poke holes all over the top with a skewer or thin knife.  Drizzle about ¼ cup of reserved strawberry juice over the top of the bread, allowing it to soak in.  Loosen the cake from the sides of the pan with a thin knife and leave to cool in the pan.

Makes 1 loaf

Heaven is a Biscuit

I love biscuits.  Love them.  I could eat a whole batch at one sitting, even without butter or jam or gravy.  I say I could, because believe it or not I do possess the restraint not to.

And I should probably clarify, I love good buttermilk biscuits.  Sure, I have been known to eat a fast food sausage biscuit or a chain restaurant puck covered with gravy.  If a menu has a biscuit on it, I find it hard to resist.  But my true passion is for good, down home, fresh made buttermilk biscuits.  Some people have grandmothers who make these, or live near a mom-and-pop country restaurant that produce hundreds of from-scratch, by-hand biscuits.  Someone forwarded a newspaper article to me recently about the wide variety of frozen biscuits available that are good enough that many Southern cooks have given up biscuit making altogether.  And I’ll admit, they are not all bad.

Here’s the thing though.   I make biscuits.  And I love doing it.  I think it may be because I have an image of myself as some one who can do things.  The truth is – not so much.  I can’t make fluffy white bread, or my own puff pastry, or good old-fashioned dinner rolls.  But I can make biscuits.  I like being someone who can do something that most people don’t bother with anymore.

Learning to make a good biscuit takes practice, and trial and error. Even the most experienced biscuit cook has a batch that just doesn’t work.  Maybe the weather was wrong, or the flour just wasn’t in the mood, or the cook didn’t have the right love to put into that batch.  So today I made a big batch of biscuits and carefully made notes about every step.  The recipe below may look long, but don’t be intimidated. I have tried to put in as much detail as I can to get the dough rolling.

So here are some starting tips:  I do truly recommend using soft Southern wheat flour, like White Lily (my choice) or Martha White.  I am sure you can order it online if you can’t track it down.  I use White Lily as my flour always, so I don’t have two types of all-purpose flour in the pantry. If you use regular all-purpose, you’ll still get biscuits, but if they don’t taste exactly right, that’s why.  I used to be a little afraid of shortening and made biscuits with all butter, but now I know that the shortening is really a must.  I use a combination because the boost in flavor the butter adds.  Both must be cold – right out of the fridge before you use it.  Same with the buttermilk.  I prefer cold whole buttermilk, but low-fat works as well.   Make sure you shake the bottle very well before measuring.

Buttermilk Biscuits

4 cups flour (all-purpose White Lily)

2 Tablespoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons salt

¼ cup cold vegetable shortening

¼ cup cold unsalted butter

1 to 1 ½ cups cold well-shaken buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 475 degrees. Line a baking pan (about 13” by 9” with 1-inch sides) with parchment paper or grease it well with shortening.

Measure out the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt into a large bowl that gives you lots of room to work.  Mix gently with a fork to combine and aerate the flour.

Cut the shortening and the butter into small cubes.  I cut the butter from the stick three times down the length, turn it over once, cut it three times down the length again, then across the short way.  I buy Crisco shortening in sticks as well and do the same. 

Separate the shortening and butter into cubes and sprinkle over the top of the flour mixture.  Use the fork to toss the cubes lightly in the flour to coat.  Then dip your clean fingers into some flour and mix everything together, squishing and rubbing the mixture together to combine the fats and the flour.  Don’t spend too long doing this, gentle handling is the key to a tender biscuit.  It’s okay if there are some lumps of butter or shortening left.  Many recipes describe the result of this process as looking like breadcrumbs or fine meal, and that’s okay.  I think it looks like lumpy flour.  When you pinch a bit of flour between your fingers, from anywhere in the bowl, it should stick together.

Measure out the shaken buttermilk, then pour about ¾ cup of it over the mixture.  Use the fork to fold the buttermilk into the dough, carefully incorporating the liquid.  Keep adding the buttermilk a bit at a time until you have a cohesive dough.  You may not need all the buttermilk.  Again, you don’t want to work the dough too much, but don’t leave much loose, dry flour in the bottom of the bowl.  You can use your hands to get that last bit of dry flour into the dough.

Lightly flour a work surface.  I find the counter top to be best; a board tends to slip around.  You do want to use a light hand to flour the surface, because too much will leave an unpleasant floury coating on the biscuits.  Sprinkling flour through a wire sieve is a great way to do this.

Turn the dough out onto the surface, and turn it over on itself once or twice to bring the dough together.  I do not say knead, because you don’t want to work the dough that hard.  Press the dough into a rectangle about ½ inch thick.  Just press it out lightly with your hands to an even thickness.  This method makes the top of the biscuits slightly textured, which looks very homemade, but if it bothers you, roll a lightly floured rolling pin lightly over the top.

Cut the biscuits with a round cutter or a thin rimmed glass, always cutting as close to the edge of the dough and as close together as possible to get as many biscuits as possible.  I get a good dozen in the first batch using a 2 ½ inch cutter from this recipe.  Just press the cutter down and pull back up; don’t twist or the sides won’t rise up as nice.

Place the biscuits very close together on the prepared pan, just touching each other. This helps them rise while cooking.

Now the big debate: to re-roll or not re-roll.  There will be some leftover dough.  Some people say that this dough is not worth using again, but I disagree.  Gently press the remaining dough together and press out into a ½ inch thickness and cut – you’ll get maybe three more.  Place them on the pan with the rest of the biscuits.  The first-roll dozen are the company biscuits, the last ones just for you, so remember which are which.  Any leftover scraps can be cooked separately, or rolled in cinnamon-sugar and baked off, or frankly just eaten raw.

Bake the biscuits in the hot oven for 8 – 9 minutes, rotating the pan about 6 minutes through.  Watch the biscuits carefully so they do not over-brown. These may not get too brown on top, but will be nice and soft inside.  If you want a brown top, turn the broiler on a few minutes, watching all the time with the door open until lightly golden. Take the biscuits out of the oven, then brush the tops with melted butter (about 2 Tablespoons should do it). 

Leave the biscuits to cool slightly and then eat ‘em up.  They will keep a day or so tightly wrapped, but are better toasted when not eaten fresh.

Makes 12 – 15 biscuits

Serve your fresh, hot biscuits with Tomato Gravy or Sausage Gravy.

I love clementines.  They are the perfect, bright refreshing little sunshine snack.  They are so portable, you can just carry one around all day until you need a pick-me-up.  But I also find clementines annoying, largely because around here they are sold almost exclusively in five to seven pound bags.  I cannot eat five pounds of clementines before they start to shrivel and loose their juice.  So I am sometimes reluctant to buy them, because I know I will end up with uneaten fruit sitting forlornly on my counter.

This lovely bread is one of my excess clementine solutions.  It’s incredibly easy to whip up in the food processor and results in a sweet, citrus-y treat perfect for breakfast, tea or a great snack.  This recipe started its life as away to use tangerines, but I have found this clementine incarnation the most practical.

Sticky Clementine Quick Bread

This moist sticky bread will stay delicious for three days wrapped tightly in plastic wrap.  It can also be frozen for up to a month.  Try making it in smaller loaf pans, even individual sizes, and share with your friends.

For the Quick Bread:

½ cup unsalted butter (1 stick), room temperature

½ cup sugar

2 large eggs

1 Tablespoon clementine zest, from two to four clementines, depending on size

1 cup plus 2 Tablespoons self-rising flour

Pinch of salt

4 Tablespoons milk

For the Glaze:

4 Tablespoons clementine juice, from two to four clementines, depending on size

½ cup confectioners sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Spray a standard 9″ x 5″ loaf pan with non-stick spray.

Place all the ingredients in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade.  The butter must be soft and at room temperature.  If needed, microwave on half power in 15 second intervals until soft. Blend until the ingredients are just combined and smooth, about 1 – 2 minutes.  Do not over process.

Spoon the batter into the prepared pan, then tap the pans on the counter to spread out the batter.  Bake until golden and cooked through, about 15 – 20 minutes.  A tester inserted in each loaf should come out clean.

While the loaves are cooking, whisk together the juice from the clementines and the confectioner’s sugar until smooth.

When the loaf is cooked, run a knife around the edges of the loaf to loosen from the pan. Poke the top of the loaf several times with the skewer.  Drizzle the glaze over the loaf.  Do this slowly so the glaze absorbs into the loaves.  When the glaze is absorbed remove the loaf to a rack or a piece of waxed paper to finish cooling.

Let the loaf cool completely before serving.

Makes one loaf