biscuit Tag

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Sweets

CRANBERRY VIENNESE SANDWICH CREAMS

The crochet side-pate is from Dishes Only.

THEY ARE THE COOKIE-VERSION OF A FEEL-GOOD MOVIE, EMOTIONALLY EQUIVALENT TO A BOX OF GOLDEN TWIN-PUPPIES EACH HUGGING A HAPPY GIGGLE.

This is what I’ve been busy with for the past 7 days, recreating Mark & Spencer’s Viennese raspberry sandwich creams. What does that say about me, spending 84 hours scrutinizing a processed junk-food from a super chainstore, I don’t know. But I had to make it.

If you ever had childhood experience of reaching into a tin-box, and sneaking one of those buttery nuggets of vanilla cookies into your mouth as your first memory of pure foodgasm, then I guess, you can sort of understand. But this, this is better, upgraded. You can either go to your nearest M&S to see for yourself, or you can stay here and do it at home. But how I got here, however unexpectedly long it took, was no vanilla road. Checking out all the trusted recipes that were already out there, which, affirmingly, were all very similar to one another, let’s just say that I thought it was gonna be easy. If they all agreed on it, it must work fine, right? Humppphhh…

I made my first batch last weekend. Well, it did work fine… how do I put it… wonderfully just okay I guess. Wonderful in the sense that, flavor-wise, it was exactly what Viennese cookies are supposed to taste like, fireworks of buttery crumbs exploding in a vanilla sky. No doubt about that. But just okay because, and maybe I was being obsessively anal about it but still, I had a major textural issue with them. It was one thing to have cookies with so much butter that they “melt in my mouth”, but it was something else entirely when they could barely hold themselves together even under the slightest pressure of a finger. Like, I was scared to touch them… like literally, they eroded on my fingers. I mean, if that sounds like a “dat a problem?” to you, then great, but I might add that they also had a paste-like and almost glue-ish texture in the mouth that… I just couldn’t quite get over.

11.04.2015

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Dairy, Sweets, updated recipe

HONEY WHIPPED RICOTTA-STUFFED SCONES

THE THICKENED AND EMBRACIVE RICOTTA-MASCARPONE MOISTENS THE CRUMBS LIKE A SCONE CARRYING ITS OWN CLOTTED-CREAM

Sometimes, we wait for the perfect recipe-publishing moment to present itself. Iced dairies to fend off the heat in August… festivities to baste in the spirit of October… chocolates to sweeten the tones of February, and austerities to bring in those bikini-lines in May. Recipes, like romance, like good stories. I get it. But sometimes, most times actually, the birth of a certain recipe comes as forcefully and inevitably as the bad news it carries. Sometimes, we just have to make something, quite simply, because it’s Monday.

I hate Mondays. And please note, that coming from someone who is technically unemployed, that is saying a lot. Because Monday feels like standing at the bottom of an endless stairwell, and a monkey is holding a $20-bill at the top. Monday feels like watching the prelude of a documentary on counting alphabets in a foreign language without subtitles. Monday feels like powering through the infuriating hunger on the last day of a juice-cleanse, but only that it is still the first day. Monday feels like a brand new sandbag. Monday makes my coffee tired. So even though I’ve came up with this buttery scone stuffed with honey-whipped ricotta a while back, and have been waiting for the perfect timing to tell you all about it, it dawned on me that today, which is a Monday, is actually when your joy-deprived souls will need it the most.

This time-tested, my go-to scone-dough (or biscuit dough, whatever, who knows the difference really) is crispy and flakey on the surface, but its moist and crumbly interior houses a good dollop of creamy, slightly salty, zesty whole milk ricotta whipped with mascarpone and floral honey. Eaten hot out of the oven, the oozy filling bursts enthusiastically to lift your most stagnant Monday-blues. Eaten cooled with rewarded patience, and the thickened and embracive ricotta-mascarpone will moisten the crumbs like a scone carrying its own clotted cream. I don’t know about you, but my Monday is nearing its end, and I haven’t yet raised the first thought to smash my computer on the pale wall. And I say no human should go another Monday without it.

09.14.2015

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Dairy, Meat

BREAKFAST SAUSAGE BISCUIT GRAVY CASSEROLE

I know that you know how it feels, to be nagged by your tireless other half on executing tasks that the difficulty of which, he/she has absolutely no idea of. This is no doubt an important subject that touches the very fabric of the marriage establishment, a possible and perhaps convincing argument made by the anti-commitment party, as one of the many fears that they don’t want to be trapped with. But for the rest of us, I’d like to say I, I know how you feel… To elaborate on such subject more personally, I’m once again, reminded that there’s a crucial member behind Lady and Pups whose profile, you may not have been properly introduced.

Jason, this is everybody. Everybody, Jason my husband.

Jason my husband, who thinks it would be tremendously cool, you know as a side-hobby of this nocturnal creature, to invest every possible weekend-mornings on the driving-range together on his visions to become… the couple who golfs. Jason my husband, who thinks it would be only fitting as our retirement blueprints, for me to finally open and run a restaurant/his personal whisky bar, and simultaneously, without saying of course, raise a whole ranch of organic kettles on the side. Jason who doesn’t cook, but for the life of him, cannot understand why this house doesn’t serve freshly baked bar nuts. Jason who thinks, since I already bake cookies and make pies, why not start producing, from scratch…

… our very own sausages.

THE KIND THAT WOULD TURN MY KITCHEN INTO DEXTER’S WET DREAM,

AND ME, THE THINGS HE STUFFS INTO PLASTIC BAGS.

12.10.2014

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry

Rise baby Rise!

Cuz I don’t brown up nice in the oven. NO! I meant I can’t bake! I’m paralyzed in the field of baking because I’m innately handicapped in following instructions. But I, too am a mere mortal who’s powerless against the calling of fresh-out-of-the-oven pastries. And I have a thing for biscuits.

For one, it is one of the few pastries that doesn’t need egg (ok, I LOVE eggs but can’t have them. That’s a Ginormica sob story for another time). And plus, they’re just endlessly versatile. They are the personal escorts, the Emporors Club of the pastry world. They will play any role you want them to play for the day, breakfast, lunch, dinner or dessert! Fantastic! If one could just be a gentleman, invest in a little courtship beforehand to get to know the biscuits well, to help her reach you-know-what. What?

It’s the RISE, baby!!!

04.15.2012