Grandmother's Buttermilk Cornbread

This cornbread is to die for! I mean it is so moist and so thick...and well I loved it so much I kept the recipe and as you know I only put recipes on here that I really don't EVER want to lose. 

Now I myself have not made this recipe. But I have eaten it several times. My mother in law has made it and it is tried and true. Perhaps it is the way the ingredients are mixed as to why it turns out so good. You've gotta try it!!

INGREDIENTS

½ cup butter
⅔ cup white sugar 
2 large eggs
1 cup buttermilk
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 cup cornmeal
1 cup all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS

Step 1

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease an 8 inch square pan.

Step 2

Melt butter in large skillet. Remove from heat and stir in sugar. Quickly add eggs and beat until well blended. Combine buttermilk with baking soda and stir into mixture in pan. Stir in cornmeal, flour, and salt until well blended and few lumps remain. Pour batter into the prepared pan.

Step 3

Bake in the preheated oven for 30 to 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Best Baking Powder Biscuits

The Best Baking Powder Biscuits Ever!

Have sausage in the fridge on a saturday morning? Craving sausage and biscuits? Don't get the yellow Bisquick box or buy those shiny cylinders with the cute dough boy on them - really they are not as good as you think. Nothing beats home made.  These are no fail, buttery biscuits! Even I succeeded. 

Ingredients:
4 cups All-purpose Flour Plus Extra For Your Work Surfaces
2 Tablespoons Baking Powder
1 teaspoon Salt
1 cup Unsalted Butter, Cut Into Small Pieces
2 cups Milk

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 375 F. 

In a food processor bowl (see note *) combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. Pulse it a couple of times to incorporate. Then add the butter pieces. Pulse until the butter is cut into the flour mixture (check that your butter has been chopped up into pea-sized pieces—not large chunks).
Pour the mixture into a large bowl and add the milk. I’ve found that a wetter batter makes for taller biscuits—but you don’t want it soupy so watch your milk. You may not need all of the 2 cups. Mix the milk into the batter with a wooden spoon until it is all incorporated and the flour mix is all wet.

Sprinkle a clean surface with flour and turn out your dough onto the work surface. Give it one good knead to smooth it out. Don’t handle it too much or the biscuits won’t rise as well. Roll out the dough to about 3/4 inch or an inch thick. Then use a floured can or biscuit cutter to cut your biscuits.

Place them close together (touching) on a round baking sheet. The recipe yields 16-18 biscuits depending on how thick you roll them out. Bake them at 375 F for 18-20 minutes.

* If you don’t have a food processor, you can use a large mixing bowl and a bladed pastry cutter to cut in your butter like your mom used to do before there were food processors! 

Credit to: https://tastykitchen.com/recipes/breads/the-best-baking-powder-biscuits-ever/

Lovin' some Sunday Food

Today Charlie and I made home made bread and beef barley soup. Delicious! I have never made bread from scratch before, and now it doesn't feel quite so intimidating as it once was. Our oven cooks much faster than the recipe called for so it was a good thing I caught it before the top crust any darker than it was.

It was a beautiful fall day here too so I am happy we were given an extra hour for daylight savings time. I am lovin' it. 

It seemed to rise faster than I thought. 

Beautiful

I never write down how I make this so I didn't get quite enough barley in there.

Slices of heaven. 

It even looks like bread!

Yummilish!

So we (Charlie actually - I pretty much just watched and directed him what to do from the recipe) finally made home-made cinnamon rolls. It was just a recipe from our KitchenAid manual and I will post it but I just wanted to share this photo and remark how delicious these were! I haven't had a home-made cinnamon roll in I don't know how long.

Banana Walnut Bread

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 t baking soda
1/2 fine salt
2 large eggs, room temperature
1/2 t vanilla extract
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature plus a little more to prepare the pan
1 cup sugar
3 very ripe bananas, pealed and mashed with a fork
1/2 c toasted walnut pieces

Directions

Sift the flour, baking soda, and salt into a medium bowl, set aside. Whisk the eggs and vanilla together in a liquid measuring cup with a spout, set aside. Lightly brush a 9 by 5 by 3-inch loaf pan with butter. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment or with an electric hand-held mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Gradually pour the egg mixture into the butter while mixing until incorporated. Add the bananas (the mixture will appear to be curdled, so don't worry), and remove the bowl from the mixer.

With a rubber spatula, mix in the flour mixture until just incorporated. Fold in the nuts and transfer the batter to the prepared pan. Bake for 55 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the bread comes out clean. Cool the bread in the pan on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Turn the bread out of the pan and let cool completely on the rack. Wrap in plastic wrap. The banana bread is best if served the next day.

DeAnn's Scones

This comes from a sweet lady I work with.  We were having treats week and of course when she was frying them up the smell of scones consumed the whole building. When I asked her for the recipe she told me, "Sure! Kohlers market for $1.09 a pound bag!" I'm glad to know I am not the only one that is a working mom and makes compromises. She did give me her recipe though for when she is not working:

..........usually I use my roll recipe which is:

1/4 cup sugar
1/4/cup oil
1 can milk
2 eggs
2 dry yeast desolved
2 teasp salt
mix in flour with beaters a lot then add 1 cup hot water and mix more oh and about 8 or more cups of flour...............raise once and then roll out and raise and bake...........for scones I just raise in the bowl and then cook in oil..............yum!