Back in the Day Biscones

I recently came across this cookbook on instagram and couldn't be more tickled that I did.

It's a gem.

Great recipes, great tips and they've all been delicious!

Last week I started at the beginning of the book and went through all the recipes I wanted to try. I ended up with quite a few but first on my list (well, after already having made the chocolate chip cookies and blueberry muffins) were Biscones.

What, pray tell is a biscone? A cross between a biscuit and a scone, of course! 

Loaded with lots of delicious butter and buttermilk.

These were light, tender and oh so very good!

Buttermilk Biscones

from The Back In the Day Bakery Cookbook

1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups cake flour

1/4 cup granulated sugar

2 Tbs baking powder, preferably aluminum free

3/4 tsp fine sea salt

1/4 tsp ground cardamom (sadly I was out of this)

1/2 lb cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes (2 sticks)

1 cup dried fruit (such as sour cherries or currants), optional

1 1/2 c buttermilk, or as needed

1 egg, beaten with a pinch of fine sea salt- for egg wash

1/4 cup cardamom sugar or turbinado sugar for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 375° and line a baking sheet with parchment or a silpat liner.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the flours, sugar, baking powder, salt and cardamom- whisk until incorporated.  Add the butter and working quickly, cut it in with a pastry blender.  You should have various sized pieces of butter from sandy patches to pea-sized chunks and some larger bits as well. Add the dried fruit, if using, and toss to distribute.

Gradually pour in the buttermilk and gently fold the ingredients until you have a soft dough and there are no bits of flour in the bottom of the bowl.  You should still see lumps of butter in the dough; these will give you light and flaky biscuits! The dough should be moist and slightly sticky.

Dust the top of the batter with a little flour and with a large ice cream scoop, scoop mounds of dough onto the prepared baking sheet. Arranging them about 1 inch apart so that the biscones have room to rise and puff up in the oven. Lightly tap down the tops and brush with the egg wash. Sprinkle with the sugar.

Bake 20-25 minutes, until the biscones are lightly golden and fully baked. Serve warm or room temp with your favorite jam. These are best eaten the day they are baked.

Pastry Wrapped Sausages with Maple Dijon Dipping Sauce

Funny story. Have you ever seen a recipe and visually cataloged it in your brain... maybe even added the ingredients to your shopping list and then bought them only to find that you cannot, for the life of you, remember where you saw/read that recipe?

That happened to me a month ago. Searched my internet history, Pinterest boards, ziplist file, recent magazines I had read and still... couldn't find this recipe. Then I googled it. And I found similar recipes but not THE one... the one that was in my head and I could literally see a picture of how these things were made, in my mind.

And a few weeks ago I finally happened upon it in a new cookbook I received for Christmas, Savoring the Seasons with Our Best Bites! I couldn't believe when I saw the little inset picture on the corner of page 8. It was exactly what I had imprinted in my mind.

To be completely honest, I know I could have recreated this recipe but I really just wanted to FIND where I saw it!

So I picked up the rest of the ingredients at the store today set on making these as an after-school snack for the boys. I knew they'd love them. And they did. I made enough for two batches. One for today and another in the freezer for another day! So my recipe below is doubled. You do all the work once and get to enjoy them twice!

While the little sausage bites are great, the addition of the dipping sauce is really good. I recommend you go for it.

Pastry Wrapped Sausages with Maple Dijon Dipping Sauce
adapted from Savoring the Season with Our Best Bites, pg 8


1 box frozen puff pastry, thawed according to package
2 pkgs breakfast sausages- about 14 links; 12 oz each
1/2 cup shredded cheese- I used sharp cheddar
little maple syrup
1 egg, beaten, for egg wash

Maple-Dijon Dipping Sauce

2 Tbs Dijon mustard
4 Tbs maple syrup
4 Tbs mayonnaise

whisk until combined, refrigerate until ready to serve.
*incidentally, I think I did a 2, 2, 2 ratio on the sauce and it was still really good. So go ahead and use a little less maple syrup and mayo. Remember too how much you are making... I served about half of my sausages and froze the rest.

For the Sausages:


Unfold the puff pastry onto a silpat or lightly floured surface.  Sprinkle the top lightly with flour and roll out to about 12x12 square. Mine was not quite square as you see. Use a knife to cut into 3 equal portions. Brush one side with a little maple syrup (real maple syrup, okay I guess you could use pancake syrup but why?)

Place about 3 sausages down one side (lengthwise)  of the puff pastry, in each section. If you have a little extra dough, cut a sausage to fit. Sprinkle cheese right beside the sausage, just a little. You can skip the cheese if you'd like. These are quite adaptable. Now starting from the edge where the sausages are, roll them up until the pastry is all around them. Pinch the seam to seal.
(forgot to take a picture of this most important of the recipe. mea culpa)

Cut sausages up using a serrated knife (it worked best for me, but then I felt like the kitchen shears did an equally impressive job getting through the sausage casings). I got about 3 bites per sausage or.... this many... which is more, I know, but I wanted them to be snack size.

Repeat these steps until you've used all your pastry dough.

Place on a parchment lined baking sheet and brush with egg wash. 

OR

Take this un-egg washed batch and flash freeze it while you continue making your wrapped sausages. I did this with half of them and they're ready to be popped in the oven for the next snack time or game day or get together!

Bake at 375-400 (they forgot to mention the oven setting in their cookbook!) for 15-20 minutes. You want them to look like this:

Serve alongside the dipping sauce and enjoy!

They have the thumbs up from our crew! The Big People in the house really loved them as well! Did I mention the sauce was fabulous? It was!

Bread and Butter Pudding with Whiskey Sauce

Once March rolls around I start thinking about what we'll eat on St. Patrick's Day. Yes. Beginning March 1st, I start thinking about it. Now for the past 3 years I've been making corned beef and cabbage with potatoes and carrots. Oh and soda bread. And the now infamous St. Paddy's Day Sauce- that stuff is so very good.

We started our celebrating with Pimm's Cups (Pimm's is a type of gin and you add it to Sprite with a wedge of lemon, that's OUR version and it works!)  and a smattering of fruits and cheese and the soda bread spread with Kerrygold Butter.

The Corned Beef couldn't be easier to make. I buy the packaged kind and just throw it in a pot cover the beef with water and I do add that seasoning packet because why not? It's there right?

Once the beef is cooked through I remove it to a platter and cover it and then I throw in my sliced (not cored) cabbage, peeled carrots and potatoes. They need to boil and that cabbage needs to cook the longest it seems. I'm usually running late and thankfully, my mom has been nearby to help me out in the kitchen.

This year, she brought parsnips and cooked them once she got to our house. She slices them really thin, like long julienned strips, if you will. Then sautés them in butter until the edges brown a bit. OH MY. They caramelize and sweeten beyond their original sweetness and it's just a real treat. 

I threw my soda bread together on St. Patrick's Day morning because I ran out of time the day before. It didn't take long at all. And I'll be posting that recipe as it was quick and really good.

Lastly, the Bread and Butter Pudding with Whiskey Sauce (and Vanilla Sauce). The creme de la creme. The icing on the cake. The perfect accompaniment to our wonderful dinner.  It was a bit more time consuming than I thought but that's mainly because I hadn't really read through the recipe as well as  I should have prior to the day. I suggest reading the recipe a few times before you're in the MIDST of making a recipe. Good thing to do. I made this for my full-blooded Italian father who likes to poke fun of the Irish and their food but LOVES bread pudding.

So we'll start with dessert and work our way backwards...

Bread and Butter Pudding with Whiskey Sauce (and Vanilla Sauce)

adapted from The Irish Heritage Cookbook

1/4 cup golden raisins- I used regular 'ol raisins

1/2 cup hot water

4 Tbs butter at room temp

10 slices of white bread- let's just say a loaf of bread, crusts removed

1 cup milk

1 cup heavy cream

2 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 cup sugar

1/8 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp cinnamon

3 eggs, beaten

Whiskey Sauce

1 cup milk

2 Tbs sugar

2 egg yolks

2 Tbs Irish Whiskey (or leave that out and add vanilla in it's place)

Preheat the oven to 350°. Grease a casserole dish with butter (square, oblong, something pretty). Stick your cut bread in it first to see what will fit and then butter it.

In a small bowl, combine raisins and water and let soak 10 minutes. drain and set aside until ready to add to pudding

Remove the crusts from the bread and butter one side. Cut each slice in half (diagonally would be nice). Arrange half of the bread, buttered side up, in the prepared dish. Sprinkle the raisins over the bread (I tucked a few under some of the slices.

In a small saucepan, combine the milk, cream, vanilla, sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon. Cook over medium heat until the mixture begins to boil, 5-7 minutes. I stirred with a whisk in the beginning and then switched to a wooden spoon. Using the wooden spoon allows you to see when the sauce has thickened. When you can drag your finger along the back of the spoon and it leaves a line in the sauce... it's ready! Remove sauce from heat and slowly add a ladle of the cream mixture to the eggs while you whisk them. You need to temper the eggs OR you will have scrambled egg custard. No good. Keep adding the hot cream to the eggs and then pour this mixture over your arranged bread. Let sit for 10 minutes. I sprinkled the top of mine with cinnamon.

Cover the dish with aluminum foil and place in a larger pan- roasting pan worked for me. Add hot water to the pan around the covered dish. You're creating a hot water bath so the custard cooks evenly in the oven. Go to about 2/3 up the sides of the dish. This is down easily if you place the larger pan with the dish in it on the oven rack, THEN add the hot water. Bake about 50-55 minutes, until the custard is set. Let cool for a few minutes before removing from larger baking pan.

To make the sauce: In a small saucepan, combine the milk over medium heat until it just begins to boil. Remove from heat. In a small bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar until light and fluffy. Slowly (just like before) add a little of the eggs to the hot milk as you whisk. It will temper the eggs and you shouldn't have scrambled eggs. Simmer over low heat, stirring constantly, until the sauce thickens, about 10 minutes.**  Stir in the whiskey now OR divide the sauce into two containers and add a little less whiskey to one and 2 tsp of vanilla to the other.

To serve, spoon the warm pudding onto plates and pour the sauce of your choice over the pudding.

enjoy!

 **I actually forgot to do this part. I added the hot milk to my egg yolk mixture... slowly and still had a little scrambling occur. No worries. I simply poured the mixture through a fine mesh sieve and had perfectly smooth sauce. I then divided it into two containers, added 1 Tbs whiskey to one and the vanilla to the other.