Grapefruit G+T

A few weeks ago the weather was beautiful, sunny days without a cloud in the sky. Unfortunately, Portland is back to its normal rainy self, leaving me to dream about the past few sunny weeks. I had gotten into a pretty good rhythm consisting of spending as much time outdoors as I possibly could. One of these days, probably my favorite from the past few weeks, Matt and I spent the whole day together. We started off by going a getting a few plants for my house (who doesn't like new plants??) and when we got back we went for a long walk through my neighborhood and ended up walking through a park a few blocks from my house. When we got back I decided that since the weather was so nice that this was a good day for a spring cocktail (I am a huge fan of gin and tonics but they are best during the warmer months), thus this drink:

Grapefruit G+T 
You will need:
4-5 oz soda water
.75 oz Jack Rudy Small Batch Tonic (instead you can just use tonic water)
1.5 oz gin (I use Hendricks)
1 wedge of grapefruit (I made these drinks so they only had a hint of grapefruit but you could easily add more!)

Fill a small glass with ice, add the gin, tonic concentrate, and squeeze the juice out of the grapefruit wedge. Stir, then top with soda water. *If you are using tonic water top with that instead and omit the tonic concentrate. Enjoy!

Happy sipping!
-xxC

Sunday Muffins: Whole wheat biscuits

Happy Sunday!

The past two weeks have been super busy with finals, working the Oregon Truffle Festival, and enjoying some sunny days outside. I'm not sure why, but the last few weekends in Portland have been beautiful - crisp, clear, sunny days - the perfect days for walks outside and afternoons spent in my porch swing with Matt. Now that things have settled down a bit I am looking forward to get back into blogging.

As part of the second term of school we had a week entirely on baking, on the first day we learned how to make biscuits. Growing up I always thought biscuits were really hard to make - something that my grandmother was able to make perfectly but any time my mom tried to make them they turned out like hockey pucks. You probably think I'm kidding, but I'm not - like they were so hard that my mom probably could have used them during her sunday hockey games. So biscuits were something that I remember only having at my grandmother's house on warm summer nights as the base of strawberry shortcake or with molasses and butter (it's a Maine thing). But after making them at school I have realized that they are super easy to make as long as you follow a good recipe and don't add too much liquid or play with the dough so much that gluten forms - causing them to become hockey puck like.

I normally make them without sugar if I am eating them with something savory such as dinner or with gravy but since Matt and I were having butter, compote, and cream on them I decided to make them slightly sweet. Normally I would never have compote and whipped cream on a breakfast item but Matt and I went to Tasty n Sons last weekend for brunch and had warm biscuits with blueberry compote and whipped cream - so, if they consider it a breakfast item thats good enough for me!

Biscuits (makes 5 three-inch biscuits)
1 tbs sugar (optional)
1/2 tbs baking powder
12 oz flour (I used a mix of white and whole wheat)
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup milk
4 oz cold butter

Start off by adding all of the dry ingredients to a mixing bowl. Mix the ingredients.

Now the secret to great biscuits - use a cheese grater to grate the butter into the flour mixture. To avoid having the butter melt in your hands dip the cold butter into the dry ingredient mixture which will provide a barrier between the butter and your hands. Now work the butter into the dry ingredients (it's way easier to use your hands for this part) until the mixture looks like a bowl of crumbs.

 Now slowly start adding the milk. You probably wont have to add all of it so just add enough so a dough forms. It's okay if parts of it look slightly dry - the butter will melt in the oven.

 Turn out the dough onto the table and press it into a slab that it about 3/4" thick. Cut the dough into the desired shape.

 Place them onto a sheet pan lined with parchement paper and brush milk on the tops. I sprinkled some sugar on the tops too! Bake at 400˚F for ~20 minutes (until the tops are golden).

Enjoy!
-xxC
 

Sunday Muffins: Blueberry Scones

Good Morning!

So I know it has been a while since I have published one of these sunday posts - actually it has been almost two months since I have done one of these posts - I wish I had a really good excuse as to why I haven't done one, but I don't. I am the queen of putting things off and this year I decided that one of my new years resolutions would be to "be more on top of things, more organized, and less of a procrastinator." So far I have been making some progress on this and, considering this is the first sunday that I haven't been traveling since the New Year, I'm happy that I was able to find the time to make these scones this morning.

This brings me to my second resolution: slow down. I love being busy, having lots of plans, and always knowing what I am going to do next but after a while I get tired and then I get grumpy and then I am not always the most fun person to be around. This year I want to focus on having more down time and trying to enjoy it. This might mean an hour between class and doing errands or it could mean whole sunday mornings devoted to doing nothing but drinking strong coffee and making muffins - either way I am going to try to find more time to slow down and enjoy the simple things.

So this morning was one of those slow sunday mornings where I slept in, made a big cup of coffee, and drank it while looking through cookbooks while I decided what I wanted to bake for breakfast. I decided on the Blueberry Scones from Alice Gao who is featured in The Kinfolk Table cookbook which I received for christmas from one of my best friends, Ella. The cookbook is beautiful - it mixes mini-biographies, recipes, and beautiful photography into one amazing book - and is easily one of my favorite cookbooks to date.

I found the recipe for these scones while flipping through the book and I remembered a bag of blueberries that I had bought at a farmers market this summer and froze so I could have blueberries all year long. Since I already had all of the ingredients I decided to try the recipe out. Since it is only me this morning (Matt is still visiting his family in California) I cut the recipe in half so I wouldn't end up eating an entire batch of scones all by myself - which would be both sad and scary but probably delicious.

Blueberry Scones (makes 4)
1 cups AP flour
1.5 Tbs sugar (plus a bit more to sprinkle on top)
1.5 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3 tbs cold butter (cut into small pieces -or- you can grate it with a cheese grater)
1/2 cup fresh/frozen blueberries
1 egg
a little under 1/4 cup of heavy cream
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 400˚F.

Sift flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt together.

Add butter and using your hands work it into the dough until the butter had been incorporated and the dough look very crumbly.

//A note about blueberries - make sure there aren't any stems in the mixture, no one wants to bite down
on one of these! //

Add blueberries and give the ingredients a quick stir.

In a separate bowl/cup beat the egg until it is well beaten.

Mix in the heavy cream.

And the vanilla extract. Now add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and mix with a fork until it is just combined.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and press the dough into a round shape about two fingers thick (~1.5 inches). Lightly mark lines in the dough to divide it into four quarters.

Place on a greased cookie sheet, sprinkle sugar on top (if you have any of the larger crystal sugar you could use that), and bake until it is golden brown and crispy on the outside and the middle gives some resistance if you lightly press down on it.

Let the scones cool for a few minutes - but make sure you eat them while they are still warm! I had mine with some butter but they are delicious plain too!

Happy baking!

-xx C

Ricotta Cookies

Happy New Year! (Sorry I am kind of late on that one)

I hope everyone had a great holiday, I have been super busy with visiting relatives, going to New York for New Years (No, I did not go to Times Square), school starting back up, and going to visit Matt in California this past weekend. Boy, am I tired! The good news is that I am back and have a number of posts lined up for the next few weeks!

I made these cookies for a cookie swap that I participated in with a few of my friends from school. They are super easy to make and this is a recipe that allows you to use up that pesky leftover ricotta cheese that I always seem to have in my fridge. Everyone loved them at the cookie party and I can't wait to find another reason to make them again soon!

Ricotta Cookies (makes about 36)
1.5 cups flour (It calls for cake flour, but I used all-purpose and it was fine)
.5 cups AP flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
4 oz. (1 stick) butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
7.5 oz ricotta cheese

Preheat oven to 350˚F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.

Combine flour, baking powder, and baking soda in a small bowl and set it aside. In a larger bowl (or in the bowl of a stand mixer) cream the butter and sugar. Once combined and fluffy add the egg. In another smaller bowl combine the vanilla and ricotta. Now it's time to mix all of the different components together, to do this alternate adding the dry ingredients and the ricotta mixture to the butter, sugar, and egg mixture. It should result in a pretty thick batter.

Drop the batter by teaspoonfuls onto the baking pans.

Bake for about 8 minutes or until the bottoms are golden (don't worry, the tops won't color at all so check the bottoms). Once done, remove and place on cooling racks until completely cool, then you can glaze them (although they are pretty good all by themselves).

I glazed them with this recipe:

Glaze
1/4 cups half and half
almond extract
Icing sugar

Add the half and half to the bowl of a stand mixer, start adding icing sugar until a thick glaze/thin frosting forms. Now add about 2 tsp almond extract (I really like almonds so I made mine pretty strong, but you don't have to add as much). This liquid might thin out the glaze too much so you might need to add a bit more icing sugar.

To glaze the cookies - dip the top of each cookie into the glaze and let harden on the cooling racks. I sprinkled some edible glitter on mine but you could top them with you favorite cookie decoration or even a sliced almond.

This recipe is from the book "One Sweet Cookie" by Tracey Zabar.

Happy Baking!
xx C