Cinnamon Biscuit Fans

I've made cinnamon biscuits for you before, but I was intrigued with the fan presentation of these.  Who can resist the sweet layers of cinnamon and sugar in these pretty breakfast  fan biscuits?  These look fussy to make but are easy peasy, lemon squeezy to make.  A knife, a ruler, and a muffin tin, a bowl, and you are nearly there! Let me show you how.

Cinnamon Biscuits Fans

(BettyCrocker.com)

Makes 8 Biscuits

For the Biscuits

2 cups flour

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

3 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup butter, cold (equal to 16 teaspoons, or 5 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon)

3/4 cup milk

For the Filling

3 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened

3 tablespoons granulated sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

For the Glaze

1/2 cup powdered sugar (confectioners' sugar)

1/4 teaspoon vanilla

2 to 3 teaspoons milk (or amount required to drizzle)

Preheat oven to 425*F. Grease 8 regular sized muffin cups. 

In a large bowl, mix the flour, 2 tablespoons granulated sugar, baking powder and salt.  Cut in the firm butter using a pastry blender (or pulling 2 table knives through the ingredients in opposite directions), until the mixture resembles fine crumbs.  Stir in just enough milk so the dough leaves the side of the bowl and forms a ball. 

The the dough onto a lightly flowered surface.  Knead lightly 10 times.

On a lightfly floured surface, roll dough into 12 x 10 inch rectangle.

Spread 3 tablespoons butter over rectangle.  Mix 3 tablespoons granulated sugar and the cinnamon and sprinkle over the rectangle.

With the long side of the rectangle facing you, cut crosswise into six 10" x 2" strips.  

Stacks strips.  Cut strips crosswise into eight pieces.

I cut in half, lay the two stacks of strips in front of me, cut stacks in half again, cut in half again. 

Place cut sides up in muffin cups.

Bake 15-18 minutes or until golden brown.  Immediately remove from muffin cups to cooling rack.

In medium bowl combine all the glaze ingredients and stir until smooth and thin enough to drizzle.  Place the cooling rack over a large plate lor cookie sheet to catch any dripping glaze (I just rested my cooling rack on  my muffin tin ~ no point in dirtying up another dish.).  Drizzle glaze over warm biscuits.  Serve warm.

I hope you enjoy these.  These are quite sweet, but go down a treat!

Tea Ring

Do you dream of traveling, like photos from far off places, like a quirky sense of humor?  Then please visit my friend Jackie of Junk Boat Travels. It seems to be she has been just about everywhere, and she has tons of gorgeous photos documenting her travels.   One of Jackie's goals is to declutter, smiles, and as a result decided to reduce her collection of books.  She knows I'm a collector of sorts of antique cookbooks, and when she decided to make room in her abundant bookcase, she immediately thought of me. How fortunate am I!

One of the cookbooks she gave me is The Art of Cooking and Serving by Sarah Field Splint, printed in 1938.   It's a great little book, explaining how to set a formal table (gulp!  I have been putting folded napkins on the right side of the dinner plate and they should go on the left!), the different pieces of flatware and how to place them, how to choose china, and how to properly attire your maid for formal and informal occasions. Along with all information that are 549 tested recipes (as stated on the cover), and of those, I found this delightful tea ring with vanilla frosting. 

Some recipes, regardless of their age, are keepers, and this is one of them.  This tea ring is made from a  flaky biscuit dough.  In spite of its rustic appearance, the ring shape gives a touch of elegance.  I would be very pleased to serve this to any breakfast guest. 

Thanks, Jackie.  You are a dear!

Tea Ring

3 cups flour
1/3 cup sugar
5 teaspoons baking powder (yes, that's the correct amount)
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup Crisco shortening
1 egg, beaten
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup raisins 1/2 cup nuts, chopped

Mix and sift the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Cut in Crisco with a knife or rub in with the finger tips. Add beaten egg, and enough milk to make a soft dough.  Roll out into a 1/4 inch thickness into a rectangular-shaped piece.  Spread lightly with softened Crisco,** sprinkle with raisins and nuts** and one tablespoon sugar.  Roll like a jelly roll lengthwise.  Bring ends together to make a circle and press together.  Put on a large greased pan and cut gashes around outside edge with scissors, 2 inches apart.  Bake in a 350*F oven 25 to 30 minutes.  Spread with confectioners' frosting.

Roll as if for jelly roll.  I used butter in place of the softened Crisco for spreading on the rolled out dough.We have a nut sensitivity here so I omitted them and sprinkled with cinnamon and lightly pressed the raisins into the dough so they'd be less likely to fall out when I cut into the tea ring shape.

Form into a circle and pinch ends together.  

Cut in slices about two inches apart, but not all the way through to the other side of the ring.  You want to leave a "hinge."

Gently turn the slices on their sides, slightly pulling them so that they fan out.

Confectioners' Frosting

1 1/2 tablespoons Crisco

1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar

3 tablespoons milk or cream (or amount required needed for desired spreading consistency)

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

Cream Crisco, add sugar gradually and cream together thoroughly.  Add enough milk or cream to make the frosting the proper consistency to spread.  Add salt and vanilla and  mix well. 

Sausage Gravy on Biscuits

My brother Grant was telling me a while back that he had sausage gravy on biscuits and that they were "mighty fine groceries."  I had seen recipes around for this but never had it, thinking it was a little too hearty for our tastes, but curiosity and an extra large hunger pang this morning lead me to trying this.  Now I regret all those missed opportunities, but am heartened (can one be "heart"-ened by a sausage gravy breakfast, I wonder?) to know that we'll be enjoying this again.  Ole Sweetie-Pi loved it!

Sausage Gravy on Biscuits

(Cooking from Quilt Country by Marcia Adams)

1 pound bulk sausage, as lean as possible
2 tablespoons finely minced onion
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 quart milk
1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon poultry seasoning
Dash of Worcestershire sauce
Dash of Tobasco

Baking powder biscuits, recipe of your choice

Break up the sausage into a large saucepan and saute over medium-low heat.  Do not allow the meat to brown or to get crisp.  When the sausage is about three-quarters cooked, add the onion, and cook until the onion is transparent.

Drain of all but 2 tablespoons of the meat drippings (you don't have to be too precise about this). Stir in the flour with a whisk and cover over medium-low heat for about 6 to 7 minutes, or until the flour turns golden and bubbles up.

Pour in the milk all at once and add the seasonings.  Cook and whisk until the mixture thickens (about 5 minutes or so). Taste for salt and pepper and re-season of necessary.   Split open a nice hot biscuit and top with sausage gravy.

Fruity Nutty Buttery Biscuits

 

Ingrid, my beautiful friend of  3B's...Baseball, Baking & Books,  recently posted an irresistible breakfast treat she makes for her adorable family.  She says she found this recipe on Monica's blog, Lick the Bowl Clean.  Wow!  Have you ever visited either blog?  Both have beautiful photography and delicious food.  Just a word of caution, don't to to either blog if you're even the teeniest bit  hungry because you'll be ravenous when you leave.  I know this from personal experience; proceed at your own risk.  You have been warned, grins.

The minute I saw these caramel-y , nutty, fruit topped breakfast treats I had to make them the very next morning.  And if that's not enough to convince you, even the bottoms of the biscuits are brushed in melted butter and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.  Oh my!  I think I even dreamed about them.  And the good news?  You can use any kind or fruit or that catches your imagination and pleases your palate.  There is no right or wrong combination. 

I had bananas and thought I'd make the same as Ingrid's, but I've had a real yen for peaches lately, so peach it was.  I just pulled out a bag of frozen  sliced peaches, picked of any ice chips, roughly chopped perhaps three-fourths of the bag.  I didn't have canned refrigerator biscuits (what a time saver that would be, and equally as good), so whipped up my favorite biscuit recipe, Never Fail Biscuits . 

 

Ingrid, these were so good.  I won't embarrass myself and tell you how many  golden caramel, peach, and nut crowed, cinnamon and sugar dusted, buttery bottomed  biscuits I enjoyed with my coffee.  And Ole Sweetie-Pi.  Well, let's just say he thoroughly enjoyed his (though I omitted the nuts for his as he has a nut sensitivity.)  

Let me give you Monica's recipe, pretty much as she wrote it, with my notes at the following.

 Fruity, Nutty Buttery Biscuits

1 tube (of 8) refrigerated biscuits (or your own biscuit recipe) **
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, cut into 8 equal pats
1/4 cup chopped pecans
1-2 bananas cut into 1/4-inch slices (or fruit of choice)
4 teaspoons packed brown sugar ***
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon butter, melted****
cinnamon sugar


Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray  with a nonstick cooking spray or generously grease your muffin tins, set aside until you are ready to begin layering your ingredients.

Chop the nuts, set aside; dice the butter, set aside; slice (or dice) the fruit you are using, set aside. Open the can of refrigerated biscuits , or have your from-scratch biscuits already rolled and cut out, waiting to be used.

To begin, place 1/2 tablespoon or two of the 8 butter pats into each muffin cup. Sprinkle chopped pecans over the butter, then a couple of tablespoons of diced peaches over the pecans. Sprinkle 1/2 teaspoon brown sugar and a pinch of cinnamon. Top with biscuit and press into muffin tin. Brush each biscuit with melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.

Bake for 18 minutes or until golden and puffed. Allow to cool for a couple minutes before gently scooping them out onto a plate.

My notes:

**  My biscuit recipe makes more than 8 biscuits, closer to a dozen actually because I rolled them thinner than usual; I didn't want them exploding over the tops of the muffin tins.  Because the recipe is so simple, I just eyeballed the amounts for the additional biscuits. It worked out well; recipe is forgiving.

***I did not have brown sugar (what's up with that, and I'm sure I bought some the last time I went shopping!!)  Anyway, to make do, thoroughly combine 1 tablespoon of molasses with 1/2 cup of white sugar. To make dark brown sugar, double the amount of molasses.  Voila!  That's all there is to it. 

****My biscuits were a tad salty to me; next time I will use unsalted butter.

Ingrid, thanks again for finding and sharing such a delightful breakfast treat.  This is a recipe I'll turn to time and time again.  Already, I'm imagining the other fruits and nut combinations I can use....

Orange Pinwheel Biscuits

I've made these biscuits before, recipe here, as a glazed cinnamon pinwheel biscuit.  I'm on a bit of a citrus kick right now (with reported cases of the flu everywhere, I figure I need as much Vitamin C as I can get), so I  decided to make these into a orange pinwheel biscuit. These are a delightful little breakfast biscuit; no advanced kitchen skills or exotic ingredients required.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit.
Generously butter and have ready a muffin pan (though I used a 9 inch x 9 inch baking dish)

Make the biscuits as directed as for the cinnamon pinwheel biscuits recipe.


Then make the Orange Butter.

Orange Butter

Cream 1/4 cup butter with 1/2 cup sugar.
Add 1/2 cup of orange juice and 2 tablespoons grated orange peel.  Mix, but the mixture will probably look curdled.  That's okay.  The butter will melt as the biscuits are cooking.

If using the muffin pans, divide the orange butter between the 12 buttered muffin cups (otherwise just pour into your baking dish).  Arrange the sliced biscuit pieces in the muffin cups (or place 3 x 4 in your baking dish).  Bake for about 15 minutes or until golden brown.  While still warm, carefully scoop the biscuits out of the muffin tin or pan, turning upside down so that you can see all that gorgeous orange butter on top.

Mahogany Beef Stew and Never Fail Biscuits

Doggone it's been cold here.  We probably don't have as much snow on the ground as some of our southern and western cousins do, but we sure have plenty of the low double and single digit temperatures.  Once we get chilled, the cold goes to the bone, and it seems to take forever to thaw out.  (Have you ever noticed that in some places folks use the colloquialism  unthawed, such as unthaw the meat, when they really mean thaw? I digress but felt a need to point it out, grins.)

It's a good day to turn the oven to bake something hot...

and set a pot on the stove to simmer something long and slow and comforting...

It was just one of those days when no one minded the kitchen being heated up.

For a short while during the Depression years, my grandfather cut wood for a living and, in conjunction,  my grandmother ran a small boardinghouse of sorts where the workmen could stay and she'd feed them. She provided very simple fare she told me, but her baking powder biscuits were a staple, and her biscuits were her pride and joy.  To this day I don' t know of anyone who can make them higher or fluffier or more golden.  I can still see her knobby knuckles, splayed fingertips, the heavily veined hands, working the flour and lard together until "it felt just right."  Brows furrowed, no measuring, just working quickly.

I did not inherit the baking powder biscuit gene.  I have to give my beloved, sainted grandmother credit; she did try to teach me.  I made rocks, hockey pucks, door stops, cannon ballast, but not biscuits.  I gave up. years passed.  And then I saw this recipe on Allrecipes.  And you know what?  They're just as advertised.  They are no fail!  I've made them a dozen times at least since discovering them and every time they have risen beautifully, are tender and flaky, and taste (not quite like Gram's, must be the lard!) good.

Cold weather inspires heartier meals.  I like cooking with wine; it makes the recipe seem so much more elegant, but I mostly cook with white wine, sherry, the occasional Merlot, and of course champagne in my mimosas.   As I'm not a huge beef eater and as Ole Sweetie-Pi isn't much for gussied up food, red wine stays on the shelf until it becomes vinegar.  So, when I found this recipe for Mahogany Beef Stew with Red Wine and Hoisin Sauce on Epicurious I didn't have the recommended Cabernet Sauvignon  and had to substitute Merlot.  I think the Cabernet might have been a better choice, as this stew was a bit too sweet for my tastes, but Ole Sweetie-Pi gave it a big thumbs up.  This stew has a decidedly different, but delicious, flavor because of the hoisin sauce ~ sweet, rich, hearty, winy.  It's not the beef stew I grew up with, but one that I would make again.

Pinwheel Biscuits

A little timid about working with yeast but still want something cinnamony good for breakfast? Maybe you're just a little pressed for time? These pinwheel biscuits will turn sleep-filled eyes into shiny bright eyes! This is an easy, no yeast cinnamon biscuit recipe that helps make any breakfast special.

From one of my favorite cookbooks, The Fanny Farmer Cookbook.

First the biscuit recipe.

Baking Powder Biscuits

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons shortening
2/3 cup milk

melted butter

Cinnamon Filling

Combine and set aside
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a medium sized bowl. Add the shortening, and "cut" into the dry ingredients, either using your fingertips, a pastry blender, or two knives. Add the milk, and using a fork, quickly stir it into the dry ingredients. You may need to add a little more milk, but add it drop by drop, until the dough is soft, but not sticky. (Liquid added will depend upon the humidity of your home as well as the moisture of your flour.)

Onto a clean, floured surface, turn out the biscuit mixture. Roll the dough into an oblong about 1/4 inch thick. Brush with melted butter. Sprinkle a generous amount of the cinnamon-sugar mixture onto the rolled dough, leaving a 1/2 margin or so.

With the long edge facing you, roll the dough up, into a log shape, jelly roll fashion. Cut slices 3/4 inch thick and set on a cookie sheet, cut side down. (The recipe says an ungreased cookie sheet, but with this sugar mixture, I would be inclined to lightly grease it so that the sugar doesn't caramelize to the sheet; I use parchment paper.)

Bake at 450F for about 15 minutes or until golden brown.

When slightly cooled, top with a simple glaze, such as the one I use on my Italian anise cookie recipe.



This is a versatile recipe; any number of flavorings and fillings can be used. Butterscotch, orange butter, jams, jellies, cheese, onions, you name it. It's not just for breakfast.