Biscuits and Dinner Rolls

Baking used to scare me. I always thought any recipe with flour or yeast (especially yeast) was a disaster waiting to happen in the kitchen. Maybe I'm thinking to the time Carol and I tried to make pancakes and somehow we ended up with thick, hard pancakes. It was horrible. Emily and Cat would tease me saying how I can't make pancakes and somehow I generalized that to all things related to baking. I finally realized that it's not as bad as it seems.

Here are two recipes that I like to use. I found the biscuit recipe here. A friend gave me the dinner rolls recipe.

Easy, Flaky Buttery Biscuits

3 cups Flour

4 1/2 tsp Baking Powder

2 tbsp sugar

3/4 tsp cream of tartar

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup Butter, cold

1 eggs, slightly beaten

1 cup milk

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Mix Dry ingredients together. Cut in cold butter, until it is pea-sized. Mix egg and milk and pour into dry mix. Stir together with a fork. Combine all the dry mix with the wet mixture until it forms a soft ball. Turn out onto a floured counter. Pat down until 3/4" thick (NOTE: rolling will keep it from being flaky). Cut biscuits out and place on an ungreased pan.

Bake for 10-15 minutes.

**These freeze really well. So I like to save some of the dough since we hardly ever eat a whole batch.

Dinner Rolls

1 1/8 cup warm water

2 Tbsp milk

2 tbsp butter, melted

4 tbsp sugar

3 cups flour

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp yeast

In a large bowl dissolve sugar in warm water. Add milk and melted butter. Add yeast and stir briefly. Let it sit for about 10 minutes until frothy.

In separate bowl mix salt and flour. Stir in the water with yeast. Knead dough and let it rest for 20 minutes. Roll dough out on a lightly floured surface. Cut dough with biscuit cutter or whatever (I use a cup) and dip into melted butter. Fold each circle in half (well, not quite in half...it's more like 2/3 where the top overlaps the bottom) and place closely together in 8x8 pan.

Bake for 15-20 minutes at 375 degrees.

Brattens Clam Chowder

My mother in law made a recipe book of the recipes she uses the most.
On Sunday I made this Bratten's Clam Chowder---it was SO good (though probably not so good for you)!

2 cans minced clams (drained-reserve juice)
2 cups diced potatoes
1 cup diced celery
1 cup diced onion
3/4 cup butter
3/4 cup flour
1 quart half and half (add milk if too thick)
1 1/2 t salt (pepper to taste)
1/2 t sugar

Pour juice off clams over vegetables. Add enough water to cover and cook until potatoes are tender. (About 15-20 min).

In a separate pot melt butter, and flour and cook while stirring for 1 minute. Add half and half and cook until smooth. Add salt, pepper, and sugar. Add undrained vegetables and drained clams and warm thoroughly.

Amazing Breadsticks

My friend gave me her breadsticks recipe and it's wonderful!

1 1/2 cups warm water

2 tbsp. sugar

1 tbsp yeast

1/2 cup dry milk

1/2 tsp salt

3 cups flour

1 stick of butter, melted

Garlic salt

Parmesan cheese

In a large bowl dissolve sugar in water. Add yeast and stir briefly. Stir in dry milk, salt and 3 cups flour. Knead 3 minutes adding more flour as needed. Let it rise for about 20-30 minutes.

Roll dough out on a lightly floured surface. Cut dough into 1 inch strips and dip into melted butter. Place strips closely together in the pan. Sprinkle garlic salt and Parmesan cheese liberally.

Let rise it again for 10-15 minutes. Bake for 15-20 minutes at 350 degrees.

Flavorful Burgers

It's summer you guys! Time for burgers and grills. We just recently had a picnic with some mouth-watering burgers! (Best I've had, seriously). I like recipes with flavor and tried this one out: Ranch Burgers (except used 1.5 lbs of ground beef and half a pound of sausage- mmm); I thought it would go well with some Avocado spread I wanted to use: Creamy Avocado-Ranch Dip. I had to improvise with the avocado recipe because it wasn't exactly what I had in mind for a burger spread. I just cut the whole thing in half except left the 2 large avocados to make it heavy on the avocado. Imagine this burger: bun, heavy avocado spread, tomato, lettuce, onion, delicious juicy patty, mustard/ketchup, bun. WOW! It was awesome.

With the leftover avocado spread, I made lunch sandwiches with english muffins, spread, tomato, lettuce, and boiled egg. Good stuff.

I also want to try out these good looking burgers but can't vouch for them yet since I haven't tried them: Calico Burgers and Spinach-Feta Turkey burgers. They do have great reviews though!

Orange Burst Cookies (and Chocolate chip cookies)

Cidne asked for our favorite cookie recipe. I love these!! (Especially in winter when oranges are cheap.)

Also, this is my very favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. It's straight off the toll-house chocolate chip bag. Always use semi-sweet chocolate chips. If you take the cookies out when they still look undone in the middle, they will finish cooking (mostly) as they cool and still be soft. Love the soft, chewy cookies! (We also never add the nuts. we don't love nuts in our desserts.)

Egg Drop Soup

I found this recipe in one of my cookbooks (Taste of Home: Simple and Delicious Cookbook). It's great with fried rice and is super easy to make. Now I just wonder where you get those good egg noodle chip things. Do you know what I'm talking about? Chinese restaurants usually offer them with the soup.

3 cups chicken broth

1 tablespoon cornstarch

2 tablespoons cold water

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 green onion, sliced

In a large saucepan, bring broth to boil over medium heat.

In a separate bowl, combine cornstarch and water until smooth; gradually stir into broth. Bring to boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened.

Reduce heat. Drizzle beaten egg into hot broth, stirring constantly. Remove from the heat; stir in onion.

Yields 4 servings.

Cookies, anyone?

I've searched high and low for a good chocolate chip cookie recipe. I prefer my cookies to be really soft and chewy. I was so happy when I came across this one because it was exactly what I wanted!

This is the basis of my recipe, though for whatever reason, I thought one stick of butter was a equal to a cup of butter. I don't know what made me think that because I did know that it was really just half a cup at some point in my life. I think. Well, recently someone corrected my error and that totally shifted my cooking world. I had to rack my brain to figure out if I made my cookies with 1 stick or 2 sticks of butter. I'm pretty sure I only used one stick because I always wondered why my cookie dough was particularly dry and crumbly so I would add a extra egg to moisten it up a bit. Then as I was looking over the original recipe (found in the link), I realized that I always added more flour! I guess I wrote that wrong...whoops. SO long story short, for the original recipe go here (those cookies are good too), but my altered and equally good (if not better!) cookie recipe is below.

Ingredients

2-1/2 cups All-purpose flour

1 tsp Baking Soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup white sugar

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 package Instant Vanilla pudding mix

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs

1 package of chocolate chips (if you're going to make chocolate chip cookies, you gotta have lots of chips!)

1/2 cup nuts (optional)

1. Stir baking soda, flour, and salt. Set aside.

2. Combine butter, sugars, and pudding mix and beat until fluffy.

3. Add vanilla extract and eggs and beat until smooth.

4. Add dry ingredients and mix well.

5. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts.

6. Bake at 375* for 8 minutes. (**Very important note: if you want super chewy cookies, you must take them out of the oven as soon as they start to brown. Even if they look mushy and not cooked in the middle, that's ok. That's what makes them chewy! Also, if they don't flatten on their own, I'll smash them down a bit with a spatula after I take them out of the oven.)

What's your favorite cookie?? Post your favorite cookie recipe!