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Orange & Apple Cinnamon Biscuits Recipe

Today’s recipe is a partner to my last recipe post, Butterscotch Biscuits. If you haven’t tried those, you should. In fact, I would almost say try those first and then come back to these. I’d love to know how you feel they compare. This biscuit variation requires a smidgen more work and cooking time, but I love the extra orange, apple, and cinnamon flavors mixed in. In all honesty though, both are heavenly.

Okay, I explained in my last biscuits post how my kids go nuts when they find out we’re having these for breakfast. However, something I didn’t mention—and should have—is how kids love to help prepare this recipe. There’s some small knife work involved when dicing the apple, but other than that, kids can help with nearly every part from mixing the dough to slicing the rounds (with a dull dough cutter). If you haven’t tried cooking with your kids, I think you should give it a shot. We’ve had some great (and messy) times in the kitchen together.

The areas where my kids enjoy helping out the most is sprinkling the flour on the cupboard and spreading the butter, sugar, and apples onto the biscuit dough. They’re also pros at putting all the ingredients into the bowl. I maintain that the memories we create are worth the messes we make.

Now on to the biscuits.
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Butterscotch Biscuits Recipe

Do you remember as a kid waking up in the mornings to the smell of your favorite breakfast cooking? I sure do, and I still love it. Smelling the sweet breakfast aromas early in the morning is one of life’s great pleasures, one that almost instantly puts the entire family in a good mood.

Growing up in my family, there were a couple smells that almost always had us kids instantly bounding up the stairs: the quintessential breakfast of pancakes served with eggs and bacon and then the irresistible smell of butterscotch biscuits. Yes, I said that right… butterscotch biscuits,and today I’m going to share that biscuit recipe with you. But first, a quick peek into how awesome these biscuits are. These are not your typical biscuit, my friend.

Luckily (read: holy flipping cow, I’m incredibly lucky), my kids are not picky eaters. I’m not sure if it’s because I will eat nearly anything—with the exception of tuna loaf—and they’re just following my example, or if it’s because they know they’ll go without if they don’t eat what’s prepared. Maybe they’re really not my kids, but aliens from another planet… maybe, just maybe that’s it. (By the way, after they realized mom and dad were serious they always choose to eat what’s prepared.)
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Book Review: Ratio by Michael Ruhlman

I’m on a book craze right now and can’t stop stuffing my face with awesome literature. I recently finished reading An Edge in the Kitchen by Chad Ward and immediately after finishing, I picked up Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking by Michael Ruhlman which I quickly devoured in each spare minute that I had. In my opinion, Ratio should be required reading for anybody who cooks in the kitchen.

On Goodreads, I gave this book a 5-star rating. It’s awesome. Really.

The purpose behind Ratio is to enlighten and teach the home cook about the fundamentals of cooking in the kitchen. Sounds boring, I know, but the concept of ratios is simply fascinating. It’s not as if cooking with ratios is a super-duper, ultra-guarded secret (because it’s not), but interesting enough, it’s not well known among home cooks. Knowing ratios gives you the power to ditch the recipes, grow some wings, and fly! It won’t be long before you’re creating recipes of your own. In fact, using his custard ratios, I created a tasty (and interesting) vanilla peach custard. I’ll post the recipe once I refine it a bit. It was my first ever attempt at custard, but I could do it thanks to being taught simple custard ratios.

Let’s explore some of the fascinating aspects of Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio.
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How to Make Lemon Poppy Seed Bread (with Glaze!)

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted a recipe, and I think it’s high time I do so again.

Contrary to popular belief I’ve actually been doing a lot of cooking lately. In fact, I’ve been doing so much cooking that I’ve accumulated a gazillion and a half recipes to share with you. Some I’ve found online, others I’ve created from the depths of my inner self–and that can get pretty scary.

Some of the recipes I’ve found are from other blogs that I follow, and today’s lemon bread recipe is an adaptation from the ever popular and addicting blog called Cookie Madness, written by Anna.

I’ve made this lemon bread a few times and this last time around I added the poppy seeds, which I absolutely love–and it’s not because they supposedly make you test positive for doping. Is that even true?

A few tips when making this bread:

  1. Do not pack your flour. You want your flour to be loose so that the bread isn’t overly dense.
  2. Although bread is super delicious right out of the oven, I prefer this bread after it’s cooled down and the flavors have had a chance to mix together.
  3. I’ve tried this bread plain and also topped with a lemon glaze, a chocolate glaze, and a regular glaze. I prefer the lemon glaze.

Alright, that’s enough mumbo jumbo for one post. Let’s get baking. As always, there’s a printable recipe at the bottom of this post. The pictures in this post are a combination of the different times I’ve made this recipe.
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How to Make Donuts in 15 minutes

I realize how ironic it is to post this recipe right after the “Fight Obesity” speech, but I’ve been wanting to post this recipe for a long long time. Sometimes it’s best to throw caution out the window… not always, just sometimes.

Growing up my family spent a lot of time in the great outdoors. We’d take week long camping trips high up into the mountains where we’d spend time digging in the dirt, fishing, canoeing, laughing, swimming in the lake and river, riding horses, playing horse shoes, and just chillin’. Those are some of my favorite memories. And oh, the stories I could tell, like the one time when I accidentally seared my brother’s ear with a hot, flaming stick of death… but we won’t go into details. It really was an accident…

Let’s move on. My mom is an excellent cook, and that’s an understatement. We always looked forward to dinner in the mountains because we loved eating her cast iron dutch oven cooking. Some of my favorite dishes included chicken, potatoes, bacon, peach cobbler, donuts, and bread. My two favorites were peach cobbler and donuts. (The treats, of course!)

Just the other night, the hankerin’ to eat some of those donuts again sneaked into my appetite, so I set to it. Now, the best part of this donut recipe is that it’s effortless… seriously, it’s super fast, super delicious, and easy enough that the kids can help. Hard to beat that, and when the kids have fun, it makes it even more enjoyable. My daughter Maggie helps me make these for family night on occasion. If a camp fire isn’t readily available, you can still cook these on the stove top. As always, you can print this recipe out at the end of this post.

And just for the record I can never decide if I should spell donuts like I just did or like this: doughnuts. so I’m not very consistent throughout this post.

Enjoy, and try not to salivate on your keyboard.
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Video: How to Make No-Knead Bread

It’s snowing like crazy right now, which for some reason instantly put me in the mood to bake some great fresh bread. I love the aroma of fresh bread and biting through a crispy crust when it’s fresh out of the oven. Mmmmm. But alas, I’m still working on access to my old pictures (…click here if you must know…), and I’m at work on lunch break. So instead, I’ve been searching for an excellent bread-making video to post on The Cooking Dish (and to break this non-recipe dry spell). I came across this YouTube video posted by the New York Times featuring the Sullivan Street Bakery’s head baker, Jim Lahey, who apparently can make a mean loaf of bread. I’d love to spend a day in his bakery learning to bake.

Jim uses 5 basic ingredients to whip up a simple loaf of bread with amazing taste. He says, “[It's] a truly minimalist breadmaking technique that allows people to make excellent bread at home with very little effort. The method is surprisingly simple — I think a 4-year-old could master it — and the results are fantastic.”
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Video: How to Roll Bagels

A quick video I put together to show how I roll bagels. I was holding my digital camera with one hand and rolling with the other, so it’s not the best, but it gets the point across.

Need a bagel recipe? Click here.

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How to Make Bagels at Home

Oh yes, I love the smell of baking breads in the kitchen, and when you start adding flavors to the bread the entire house becomes especially aromatic and irresistible. On top of that, one of the hardest temptations to resist for me is eating fresh breads when they’re right out of the oven. This past weekend, I was really in the mood to bake something tasty that was a little different–hence bagels. These were amazing right out of the oven.

I created a few different variations on my original bagel recipe that I think you’ll enjoy. My personal favorite is the cinnamon raisin bagel recipe. It’s really good, and I highly recommend it. The bagel recipe described below is one that will only take a couple hours to make, versus one that may take a couple days. I’ve got to say, that if you’re willing to make your bagels over a two-day period, you’ll get a super amazing bagel; however, for those of us who prefer a more instant gratification, I think you’ll find this recipe quite pleasurable and even beyond satisfactory.

I’ve added a printable recipe at the bottom of this post. I made a few different batches of these bagels and am using mixed photos from those batches, so don’t worry if in one photo you’re looking at cranberries and in the next raisins. So, let’s make these bagels. My 3-year-old daughter, Maggie, helped me make some of these and had a lot of fun.
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