Tag: sugar

Berry and Buttermilk Scones

Berry and Buttermilk Scones // Serious Crust

Berry and Buttermilk Scones // Serious Crust
Berry and Buttermilk Scones // Serious Crust

Tis the berry season. I feel like everywhere I go, I’m seeing piles of raspberries, blackberries, even some late season strawberries. I baked these scones about a month ago, but I haven’t quite had time to post it. The time is now! Amongst all the food my mom sent home with us from the beach, were a pint of marionberries and some buttermilk.

The weekend we came home, we had a three hour band practice, and I knew I was going to need some sustenance. And who can resist warm, freshly baked, delicious scones? No one. So I whipped some up in the morning, and brought them to band practice.

I feel like my bandmates are still not used to my bringing baked goods. When I bring them, they’re there to share. Why would I bring a basked of a dozen scones all for myself? I wouldn’t. With a little nudging, I finally got the guys to snack on some. They were still warm, and smelled like sugar and berries. They were really delicious. I only wish I’d had some lemon curd to slather on them.

Berry and Buttermilk Scones

Ingredients

3/4 – 1 cup fresh berries (I used marionberry, but raspberry or blackberry would work well too)
4 3/4 cups flour
1 Tbl baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp lemon zest
1 cup plus 1 Tbl cold, unsalted butter, cut into chunks.
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
3 tablespoons melted butter
brown or turbinado sugar for sprinkling

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and baking soda. Mix in the sugar, salt, and lemon zest. Using a pastry knife or a fork, cut the butter into the dry ingredients. You want the butter to be evenly mixed into the dry ingredients, in about pea-sized chunks.

Add the buttermilk and the berries, and mix the dough gently with a wooden spoon until it holds together well. If it seems a little dry, add a little more buttermilk to the dough, a couple tablespoons at a time. Flour a cutting board or countertop, and turn the dough out onto it. Pat the dough into a rectangle about an inch and a half thick. Using a circular cookie cutter (or a water glass, if you don’t have a cutter), cut out as many circles as you can, gather together the scraps, pat them out, and repeat. Place on the lined pan, brush with melted butter, and sprinkle with sugar (brown or turbinado).

Bake scones for 20-35 minutes, until the tops are golden brown at the edges. Transfer to a cooling rack, and allow to cool for a few minutes until they’re nice and warm, but won’t scald your mouth. Serve with butter, lemon curd, jam, or any other toppings you like.

Simple Meringues from Leftover Egg Whites

Simple Meringues // Serious Crust by Annie Fassler
Simple Meringues // Serious Crust by Annie Fassler
Simple Meringues // Serious Crust by Annie Fassler
Simple Meringues // Serious Crust by Annie Fassler

I loved meringues when I was a kid – the incredible sweetness, the way they just melt in your mouth, the way they sound kind of like styrofoam (a weird thing to like, I know), and the delicate poofy shapes they came in. I remembered making them once when I was in middle school, and getting the sticky batter all over my shirt and fingers and face.

While I don’t feel as passionately about meringues as I did when I was younger, I still enjoy them. I still love how as soon as you get a crumb on your tongue, it seems to be gone almost as quickly as it came. I love the intense sweet taste, and how it lingers in your mouth. I love the slight nuttiness that comes from the slow caramelization of the sugar.

After I made the mint matcha ice cream, I had a bunch of leftover egg whites. I thought about making macarons, but I simply wasn’t in the mood for something so potentially intense where so much could go wrong. Plus, all my egg whites were in a jar together, so measuring out 3 or however many was going to be tricky. That’s the tough thing about leftover egg whites or yolks – you so often have to find a recipe that uses the exact amount you have leftover. I had seen an article recently on Food 52 about making meringue without a recipe, so I read it, and went ahead. I wouldn’t normally choose to make this much meringue, but it turns out 6 large egg whites yeilds…a lot.

Simple Meringues

Ingredients

1 part egg whites to 2 parts sugar. For example, 1 cup egg whites, 2 cups sugar. To stabilize, you’ll need 1/2 tsp cream of tartar or 2 tsp white vinegar per 1 cup of egg whites. An easy way to remember this, if you’re using vinegar, is that it’s the same amount as the sugar but in teaspoons. So, what I used: 1 cup egg whites (from 6 large eggs), 2 cups sugar, and 2 tsp white vinegar.

Instructions

Bring your egg whites to room temperature, if not a little warmer. You can do this by simply leaving them out in the kitchen for a while, or putting them in a bowl and putting that bowl in another bowl full of hot water.

Preheat your oven to 225 degrees.  Line two pans with parchment paper. In a bowl, combine egg whites and vinegar or cream of tartar. Whip on medium speed with an electric beater or in the bowl of an electric mixer until there are soft peaks when the beater is lifted from the bowl.

Once soft peaks can form, turn the mixer speed to high, and add the sugar by heaping teaspoons. This will take a few minutes (certainly if you’re making as much meringue as I was). Be patient. Once the sugar is mixed in, either pipe the meringue onto the prepared baking sheets, or drop by spoonful. I used a large ziploc, used a spatula to scoop all of the meringue in, and then cut off the tip of one of the corners, and used that for piping. It worked really well.

Bake the meringues for 1 1/2 hours, rotating front to back and top rack to bottom half way through. When time is up, turn off the oven and allow them to cool in the oven. If you have SO MUCH MERINGUE, like I did, you can turn off the oven and allow them to cool partway, remove from oven, and then preheat the oven for the next batch. I left my meringue on the counter while the first batch baked, and while it was noticeably not as fully whipped, it still worked just fine. I recommend crunching into one when it’s still warm, because how often do you get to try a warm meringue? Store the rest in an airtight container, and enjoy whenever you’re in need of a sweet, light treat.

Haroset!

HarosetHaroset

Continuing along the Passover theme here: When we returned from Tucson, I was craving some haroset. It’s one of my favorite passover foods, and a great snack to have throughout the week. So much better than chips and salsa (in my opinion). For those of you who don’t know, Haroset is simply a combination of the following: apples, walnuts, cinnamon, and wine. I’ve also seen it with raisins, pears, other spices, and sugar. But today we’ll just keep it simple. Here’s what you’ll need:

Haroset

Ingredients

4 granny smith apples
1 cup walnuts
1/2 cup (more or less) sweet red wine (this is where Manischewitz comes in handy)
1 Tbl brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Instructions

Peel, core, and finely dice the apples. I peeled them and cut them into chunks, then threw them in the food processor and pulsed them a few times. It worked really quite well and got the pieces smaller than I would have been willing to go if I had been chopping them by hand. Put the apples in a medium mixing bowl. Chop your walnuts too (I did these in the food processor too), and add them to the apples. Now pour in the wine, mixing so that the apples become a light pink. Feel free to add more wine if you want. Just don’t add too much; You don’t want a bunch of liquid sitting at the bottom of the bowl. Stir in the cinnamon and the sugar, and you’re done! Eat it on top of some matzoh with a bit of horseradish (not too much!) and enjoy!

Cinnamon Sugar Crackers

Cinnamon Sugar Crackers
Cinnamon Sugar Crackers

Cinnamon Sugar Crackers

I recently found this recipe for cinnamon sugar crackers. The pictures looked like cheez-its, except no cheese, just a lovely dusting of cinnamon sugar. They’re like cookies but smaller and crunchier. A nice way to have something sweet but smaller servings and more snack-esque than cookies. They’re like a mix between a Snickerdoodle and Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

Cinnamon Sugar Crackers

Ingredients

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
5 Tbl sugar, divided
2 tsp ground cinnamon, divided
2 Tbl milk or half and half (I used 2%)

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. In a food processor, combine the butter, flour, 4 Tbl of the sugar and 1 tsp of the cinnamon. Pulse until the mixture forms coarse crumbs. Now add the milk or half and half and process again until the dough comes together and forms a ball. In a small bowl, combine the remaining sugar and cinnamon in a bowl and set aside.

Dump out the dough onto a floured surface and, using a floured rolling pin, roll the dough out. You want it to be as much of a rectangle as you can and about 1/16 inch thick. With a pizza cutter wheel or a sharp knife, trim the sides off and cut the dough into 1 inch x 1 inch squares.

Carefully transfer the crackers to a baking sheet (preferably lined or greased). I needed to use my knife to help get the dough off the counter. Once on the baking sheet, take the blunt end of a skewer (or the end of a paintbrush because you don’t have any skewers around) and make a hole in the center of each cracker. This ensures that the crackers don’t puff up too much while they’re baking. Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar over the crackers before baking them for 11-15 minutes. I baked mine for 11 minutes, turning them halfway through. You want the edges to be golden brown. After removing them from the oven, transfer the crackers to a rack to cool. Enjoy!