Snack Time !!

Dear Foodies,

Buttermilk Biscuits
Wanna bite too :-)

I spent my Christmas and New Years weekend with my brother and had a wonderful time there. On the weekdays, he went to work & I stayed at home studying (supposedly)and watched Food Network alllllllllll day. I don't have cable in my apt (good that I don't too or I would never get anything else done). I was totally hooked onto the TV and watched all the shows by: Rachael Ray, Sandra Lee, Giada, Paula, Michael, Emril Lagasse, Ina Garten......well basically anything that got screened :-P. I also managed to try out a few when I was there. Will post the recipes soon. I am just waiting to get out of school and get cable !! haha

On one of Emril's shows he made buttermilk biscuits. I am always on the look out for eggless baking recipes and this one caught my attention. I was going to try this one too while I was with my brother, but well ....

So when I got back and finally made my way into the kitchen after a break, I made this for a surprise dinner we arranged for a dear friends b'day. I have never eaten biscuits here in the US before( not that I knew these were called Biscuits...what happened to Parle G !!) , but my frnds told me they taste a lot similar to the ones at Popoye's and KFC. yayyyyyyyyyyyy :-)

You can find the original recipe at the end of this post :

I can't follow a recipe word-by-word and so added some garlic salt that I had instead of plain salt. I eyeballed all the ingredients and might not have stuck by the measurements he gave, and that surely dint matter :-) Double check to see if you are using salted or unsalted butter before you add salt. I also used lesser butter, just abt 1/4th of a stick (~ 1 - 1 1/2 Tbsp) for 2 cups of flour and it did not effect the texture too much.

To add a special twist I added some finely chopped jalapeños and red onions and some grated mozzarella cheese as a topping. You could also added them to the dough. I intended to do that but forgot about them while making the dough and dint want to over work the dough by adding them in the end.

After extracting rounds from the rolled dough instead of reworking the extra pieces I just rolled them out to make perfect finger foods with tea.

All the recipes I saw insisted on these being served immediately after they are out of the oven. That is because they are warm and soft from the butter in it. Also rite out of the oven they have a crunchy crust and a soft melt-in-mouth inside. This is lost after the initial hour. I had a few leftover for the next few days and found them good to eat even then. A 20sec microwave made them soft again but they loose their crunchy crust though.

These are surely a must try recipe guys, do add your own twist to them and enjoy :-)

The link does not seem to work well, so here is the recipe:

Buttermilk Biscuits:
2 cups flour, sifted
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup plus 2 teaspoons buttermilkPreheat oven to 375 degrees F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, combine dry ingredients and blend thoroughly. Using your fingers or a pastry blender, cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add buttermilk and quickly blend in, making sure to not overwork the dough.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough with a rolling pin to a thickness of 1/2-inch. Use a biscuit cutter or the rim of a glass, press out as many biscuits as possible. Gather up scraps and quickly knead back together, then cut out as many additional biscuits as possible. Place biscuits on prepared baking sheet and bake until golden brown, about 15 to 20 minutes. Serve immediately.

From Emril Lagasse's show on Food Network given here.

Thank you all for your suggestions/comments regarding the template. Your views did give me new ideas. I am going to stick to the current one for now and work on the color combo of the other template. The green in the center column wasn't supposed to be green in the first place. It looks 2 shades lighter & more sober on my computer screen !! This is a problem with many colors, they don't look the same on all computer screen resolutions. There are very few web-safe colors and until I find one that universally looks similar on all screens I am going to go with the white background. Thank you again :-)