Easy Drop Biscuits from Outlander Kitchen

Dec 25, 2014

These biscuits are SO easy and SO good!

It’s no secret that I adore biscuits. They’re buttery and flaky and warm, you can put jam and honey on them, and they feel so good in my belly! But there are two things about biscuits that I don’t love. I really hate having to cut cold butter into flour—it may be irrational, but I really hate it. And while biscuits are amazing straight out of the oven, they’re usually dense, dry balls of bread that get stuck in your windpipe and try to choke them to death when you eat them as leftovers.

But no more! For Thanksgiving this year I needed to make another kind of bread for our hungry horde. We already had rolls, so I thought some kind of biscuit. The problem is that making regular biscuits for a big group is time consuming, and if they have to sit around for a while they’ll start to get dry and stale. Enter these amazing, easy drop biscuits…

These use melted butter, and stirring everything together takes a couple minutes tops. You get this shaggy dough that you can use a spoon or ice cream scoop to plop directly into the pan, so no cleanup from having to roll out and cut the biscuits. And the taste and texture! Not only are they amazing right out of the oven, but we re-heated them for dinner that night and scarfed the last couple the next morning, and they still were light and fluffy as leftovers. So basically perfect.

Pound Cake with Coffee, Chocolate and Hazelnuts

Jun 15, 2014

This is a winter kind of recipe. In fact, I made it this past winter, but I haven’t posted it yet because I was ashamed about how terrible the pictures are. I mean, seriously terrible.

But this pound cake is good. It transcends the awfulness of the pictures, and you deserve to know it.

Not only is it cake (duh), but it’s got coffee, chocolate, AND hazelnuts. That’s like the Three Amigos of deliciousness. The Three Musketeers (and d’Artagnan) of deliciousness. The Buffy, Willow, and Xander of deliciousness.

This could go on…

With the sifting, making the chocolate hazelnut paste, and then making the batter, it’s slightly more work than a regular pound cake, but not too much. And the rich combination of flavors is totally worth it.

Lemon Ricotta Pound Cake

Nov 29, 2013

I actually made this about a month ago, but haven’t had a chance to bring its greatness to you yet. I love ricotta, and I love lemon, so this is a recipe tailor-made for me. First of all, it’s super easy—just blend everything together, throw it in a pan, and call it a day. But secondly, it can do double duty as both a breakfast and a dessert.

This is the perfect antidote to holiday food excesses. It’s light and sweet and tart, so a great alternative to all of the heavy, rich desserts we’re usually consuming this time of year. It would be great to have on hand for company to just snack on whenever they want.

If I had any complaints about this recipe, they would probably be about the texture, which can be a little dry, but since it’s pound cake that’s really more the nature of the beast. It’s good on its own, but even better with some tea or coffee.

I had some overflow batter, so I greased up a ramekin and baked little individual pound cakes. Next time I think I’d use a few more ramekins and do shallower mini cakes, or else it can get a little bread-y.

Citrus Cake with Citrus Marmalade Filling & Orange-Lemon Icing

Mar 24, 2013

“Life is uncertain.  Eat dessert first.”  

~ Ernestine Ulmer

This was only my second foray into layer cakes. My first (a lemon poppyseed cake, my very first post) was…well, delicious but quite tilty and misshapen. I’ve been picking up tips and bits of advice since then and finally decided to try and put them into practice.

I had pinned this amazing-sounding (and amazing-looking, but my hopes aren’t as high!) citrus cake a very long time ago, and while I was perusing all the layer cakes I’d pinned, this was the one that kept standing out. I’ll usually choose a fruity dessert over chocolate or something rich.

I loved the combination of flavors, and it turned out so much better looks-wise than my last attempt!

Great idea, good-ish execution (Peach Cupcakes with Peach Cream Cheese Frosting)

Jul 4, 2012

As I’m sure I’ve made clear here, I LOVE cupcakes. I also love peaches—it’s always sad that my two favorite fruits (peaches and pears) are two of the hardest to find perfectly ripe and sweet. So, so many mealy, dry, gross peaches over the years.

I pinned this recipe on Pinterest when I first joined a few months back, because it sounded so delicious. So when I snagged four awesome peaches from a farm stand, I knew exactly what I was going to do with them.

I’ll admit I was a little torn on whether they were a success or not. The cupcakes themselves had an amazing texture, probably the best I’ve had—moist, soft, fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth. The frosting turned out well, maybe not *quite* as good as last time (I felt it was maybe a tiny bit oily, like the butter didn’t blend quite as well as it could’ve). But mostly it was was the fact that the peach flavor was barely detectable in both the cupcakes and frosting. And with how much I love peaches, that was a bummer.

So we’ll get into it, and I’ll offer up my thoughts. Biggest thing is I would try and find a way to add more peach flavor to everything. Maybe peach extract (which is quite hard to find), or even something like peach schnapps (maybe even a fuzzy navel wine cooler in a pinch!). Otherwise they were perfect.

Staving Off Scurvy (Orange Cupcakes with Lemon Cream Cheese Icing)

Apr 24, 2012

I adore sweets, but actually don’t like things that are TOO sweet or rich. That’s why fruity or citrusy desserts are perfect for me. And when I ran across this recipe on Pinterest, I was intrigued because orange is less common from a baking standpoint.

Plus, I had (the most delicious) lemon cream cheese frosting left over from my lemon poppyseed layer cake experiment, so that seemed a perfect fit. I’d also been wanting to try out the new frosting squeezy bag (yes, I realize it has a name—Jorge, duh—but I’m going with this one). So onward and upward!