Sour Cream

The good news is that you can make your own sour cream and it is super easy.  It doesn't require any special equipment, and your finished product has a much smaller ingredient list than the store bought stuff.  Sour cream is exactly what the name suggests, cream that has soured.  Are you ready to make your own?  You might even decide you don't want to buy the store bought version ever again.  As an afterthought, when you get to the last 2-3 tablespoons of sour cream you can add more cream and repeat the process and never run out of sour cream again.

 This is the best sour cream you will ever have.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups Heavy Whipping Cream
5 tablespoons Buttermilk

Mix together in a pint size mason jar or other lidded container.  Allow to rest with the lid/cover
on for 1½ days.  That is it.  You have just made your very own sour cream and all it took
was two ingredients and letting the natural process take place for almost two days.  I love
recipes like this, because you put forth minimum effort for maximum return. 

If you want to make a less fattening version, you can use Half & Half.  The finished sour
cream will be thinner.

Refrigerate for up to a week and serve with baked potatoes, quesadillas, beef stroganoff, or tacos.  You have many choices on how to use this yummy homemade sour cream.  

Enjoy!

Sour Cream

Printable Recipe Found Here

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups Heavy Whipping Cream (Half & Half may be substituted, it will be thinner)
5 tablespoons Buttermilk

Process:

Mix together in a pint size mason jar or other lidded container.  Allow to rest with the lid/cover on for 1½ days.

Refrigerate for up to a week.

Enjoy!

Blueberry Multigrain Muffins

We needed to balance out the chocolate muffin morning with a fruit muffin, right?  Of course. These muffins smelled amazing!  This recipe is also from the King Arthur Flour website and yes I changed it. This recipe uses Chef Brad's Wonder Flour (equal parts brown rice, spelt, and pearled barley milled together finely) too.

It tasted just as delicious as it looks, just in case you were wondering.

Preheat oven to 400 Fahrenheit.

 Ingredients for this recipe are: 2 1/4 cups Wonder Flour (or you could use white whole wheat
flour), 1 cup turbinado sugar (brown sugar will work also), 3/4 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 1/2 cups blueberries, 1 teaspoon
vanilla extract, 1/3 cup olive oil, and 1 1/3 cups buttermilk (homemade recipe found here)

 Pour sugar, salt, cinnamon, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and blueberries into a bowl
and stir until combined.

 Pour oil, buttermilk, and vanilla into another bowl and whisk together.

 Add the wet ingredients to the dry.

 Using a rubber spatula mix gently together.

 Pour batter evenly into muffin paper lined muffin pan. This recipe makes 12 muffins.

 Bake muffins for 18-20 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean. 

Remove from oven.

Enjoy!

Flaky Layered Biscuits

Several years ago my daughter asked me to make layered biscuits.  We both enjoyed eating the biscuits that come in a peel and pop open can at the grocery store.  I decided that I didn't want to buy those and went about finding a recipe.  I found a recipe, and well it was a lot of ingredients, labor intensive and really a recipe I reserved for special occasions.  Today my daughter asked again for flaky biscuits and I looked again for a recipe and was rewarded by a wonderfully simple recipe found here.  I would like to think I improved the recipe with my homemade buttermilk.  I also have a great story to go with these biscuits.   Yesterday our refrigerator/freezer died and we had to put all our perishable food into two ice filled coolers.  We then placed those coolers on our balcony in the very cold night air.  This morning it began to snow and has continued snowing all day.  I had to pull my buttermilk and butter out of snow covered coolers, I feel like a pioneer (sort of).

Preheat oven to 425 Fahrenheit.

These are so much better tasting than the canned variety from a certain dough boy.

 Ingredients for this recipe are: 1 lb. self-rising flour (4 cups), 1/2 cup frozen butter (1 stick, 4 ounces),  and 1 1/3 cup buttermilk (I used homemade, recipe can be found here).

 Cut butter in half, with one half slice into pats, the other half cut into cubes.  This will insure a variety of butter consistency in the biscuits to both create flaky and tender results.

 Put butter in flour and using your fingertips gently squish the butter and flour together to create
a pea sized floured butter pieces.  Add all but 2 tablespoons of the buttermilk.  Gently knead the
dough until it just comes together.  I like wearing gloves to help both keep my hands from drying
out from multiple washings and it prevents my warm fingers from melting the frozen butter.

 Roll dough out on lightly floured surface, gently.  When it is 1/4-1/2 inch thick, fold in half and
turn clockwise 90 degrees.  Roll to 1/4-1/2 inch thickness again, fold and repeat.  As long as
you are folding in the opposite direction of the last fold you will begin to notice your dough is becoming layered.  Keep folding till you have folded four times. 

To ensure you do not seal the layers together use a very sharp round cutter pushed straight
down without twisting at all, or a knife pushed straight down into the dough.  I don't have
cookie cutters, so I made square biscuits using a knife.  

See the layers?

 Place on greased or parchment paper lined cookie sheets. Use the remaining two tablespoons
of buttermilk to brush on the biscuits.

 Bake in oven for 10-12 minutes.

I love the layers, don't you?

Enjoy!

Cornbread

I'm making chili for dinner.   See the next post for the recipe.  My husband always reminds me that if I'm going to make chili, I must also make cornbread.  Our church has a chili cook-off every year around Halloween, and what I have noticed is that very few people bring cornbread and it is gone far quicker than the chili.  My point is cornbread should be with chili.  You know the saying (using your best hillbilly accent) "Cornbread and chili," they are synonymous with each other, they go together like Lavern and Shirley, milk and cereal.  I like cornbread, it can be tricky though.  Making cornbread that is moist and flavorful is hard.  Tonight's cornbread recipe was born out of my pantry using what I had to work with, and even with that history it turned out well.

Preheat oven to 400 Fahrenheit

 Cornbread and chili, did you say it with the accent?  I did.

 Ingredients for this recipe are: 2 cups white or yellow cornmeal (I had white on hand), 2 cups self-rising flour, 2 eggs, 1/2 cup olive oil, 2 1/2 cups milk (next time I'll use my homemade cultured buttermilk, mine wasn't ready yet, recipe found here), 3/4 cups honey (I used raw).

 Pour or put all ingredients in mixer bowl.

 Mix with whisk attachment until thoroughly mixed, let rest until oven is preheated.

 Evenly divide between two cake pans, or pour into a 9x13 pan.

 Bake for 30-35 minutes.  Remove from pans, allow to cool then cut.

Cornbread and chili, another chance to say with an accent.  Silly people.

Enjoy!

Homemade Cultured Buttermilk

Cultured buttermilk is super easy to make.  All you do is pour ingredients together, shake or stir, and leave on the counter for 24 hours.  Easy, enough said.  Sorry, I have photos and explanations to help.

Would you like to make your own cultured buttermilk?

 Ingredients for this recipe are: 1 cup cultured buttermilk (I used my own homemade buttermilk),
6 cups milk (your choice), 1/2 gallon mason jar or any container with a lid.

Pour milk and buttermilk in jar, put lid on, and shake to combine.  Place jar in corner of
kitchen on counter out of the way.  In 24 hours you will have your very own homemade
cultured buttermilk.  Buttermilk has a long shelf life, makes great pancakes too.
When your buttermilk is down to the last cup, repeat and add more milk.  

Enjoy!

Buttermilk Spelt Pancakes

My children LOVE pancakes. We have eaten pancakes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. These pancakes are the best pancakes I have ever made.  This recipe is the culmination of many attempts at the perfect pancakes.  These pancakes will change your life, well not really, but they are that yummy.

Would you like to make these?

 

Ingredients for this recipe are: three large eggs,  1 tablespoon sugar (I used turbinado), 

3 tablespoons coconut oil, 1 2/3 buttermilk(I used homemade, recipe found here), 1/2 teaspoon 

salt, 1 teaspoon Baking Soda, 2 teaspoons Baking Powder, 1 1/2 cups Spelt flour 

(I freshly milled mine).

 Separate the three eggs, put the yokes in a bowl, put the egg whites in a mixer and beat
them until they form stiff peaks.   Remove the egg whites to a plate, bowl, whatever you
want and put them aside.

Put coconut oil, buttermilk, and egg yolks in the mixing bowl and mix.

 Add the flour, Baking Powder, Baking Soda, and salt.  Mix the batter till just mixed.
Do Not Over-mix!

 Gently add half the egg whites and fold in, this half can be added quickly.  the second half
should be folded in slowly, we don't want to deflate the egg whites.

 Let the batter rest while you pre-heat the griddle.

 Would you like Gingerbread pancakes, my son's don't like these so I didn't get to make them this way.  The ingredients to add for Gingerbread cookies are: 2 tablespoons molasses, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, 1 teaspoon ginger.

I used a 1/4 cup ladle to pour batter on the griddle.

 Beautiful pancakes, that is why I use a ladle to pour.

Flip the pancakes when you see bubbles around the edge.

Enjoy!