THE BISCUIT WORKSHOP—ORANGE SCENTED BUTTERMILK BISCUIT CINNAMON ROLLS

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Let the warming scents of cinnamon and orange fill your home and welcome the holiday season with these, I promise you, easy to make Orange Scented Buttermilk Biscuit Cinnamon Rolls. Sure you could pop open a can from the refrigerator section of your local grocery store and have basic cinnamon rolls in 30 minutes or so… piping hot and full of artificial flavors, colors and preservatives—uh, yum? Guess what, you can do better than that and it won’t even take that much time.

It all starts with one simple recipe and you’ll be able to make both the Orange Scented Buttermilk Biscuit Cinnamon Rolls and my Buttery Buttermilk Biscuits. I’m mean come on, just look at those flakey layers! You know, the buttermilk biscuits, brushed with a little melted butter and a sprinkling of crunchy Maldon salt and fresh ground pepper might just deserve a spot on your Thanksgiving table in place of the typical, dare I say tired, dinner rolls. Just a thought.

The beauty of these quick cinnamon rolls means you get all the deliciousness of a cinnamon roll without having to plan ahead the night before to give yeasted or sourdough cinnamon rolls time to rise—a couple times. Don’t get me wrong, I love them and will eventually share my sourdough cinnamon roll recipe with you all but sometimes you just don’t have the extra time or you get that spur of the moment craving and lets face it, nothing involving yeast is spur of the moment.

I love to bake these in a cast iron pan, but never fear an 8 or 9 inch cake pan will work as well. Just know that if you do bake them in cast iron it’ll take a bit longer, but oh so worth it. I hope you love these as much as I do and keep them on repeat all throughout the holidays and beyond. Now get in there a whip up some way better, and better for you than store bought, Orange Scented Buttermilk Biscuit Cinnamon Rolls… and some flakey, Buttery Buttermilk Biscuits while you’re at it.

BAGELS ARE BACK...

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After several months of flour shortages, bagels are back! It was really cool to see people getting into bread baking, sourdough starters and the like during #Stayathome / #Saferathome, but man, my flour supplies definitely took a hit from all that enthusiasm. Happy to say, I’m well stocked and able to offer a full menu again… checkout the Bakery Menu for details. Be on the lookout for summer fruit galettes, pies and maybe a few more things. In the meantime time, I’ll just leave you with some gratuitous bagels shots.

NOT A SUCCESS... NOT QUITE AN EPIC FAILURE. ADVENTURES IN RECIPE DEVELOPMENT

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All ideas aren't necessarily good ones. Well, in this case that's not entirely true. I do think a rich, chocolatey brownie spiked with some chili heat is a good idea, just not this rendition. Alas, it was my bright idea when I came across the Guajillo Chili chocolate you see here (love the packaging, cute!). I had used the plain version of this brand and type of chocolate once before in class on a day that we made a particularly terrible mole. True story, it was not good, and no amount of tweaking we did improved it. There was a flaw in the recipe somewhere. That's the point of testing in recipe development. Very rarely are you going to knock it out of the park on the first version. So it went with this Guajillo Chili chocolate brownie fail.

Let's start with the chocolate tasting. This is some seriously sugar-grainy chocolate that reminded me of Freddo Frog chocolate my sister brought back from Australia. We'll just say that was a long time ago, and perhaps Freddo has changed. I do remember Freddo, in all his cute molded chocolate frogginess, being both sweeter and grainier in texture than say, a Hershey bar. The heat in the Chocolate Mexicano Guajillo Chili is decent if you eat a piece of it, it just didn't seem to survive once it was melted along with unsalted butter. I tasted the batter and noticed the lack of heat, and added some cayenne pepper, but not enough I would later discover.

Decreasing the amount of sugar in my "regular" brownie recipe was a must to account for the additional sugar in the chocolate. I should have also ditched one of the 3 eggs I normally use because the texture was just odd—not moist and chewy, but rather dense though not heavy. I know, how contradictory does that sound?! It was kind of like a souffle-meets-molten chocolate cake if both are slightly over-baked, you follow me? Just trust me, it was not the texture anyone is looking for in a brownie, except maybe someone who likes a cakeier brownie... you know, crazy people.

In the end, the chocolate taste was good, but the overall color was quite a bit lighter than my usual brownie. I'm still a little amazed that the chili, even the cayenne, didn't come through at all. By the way, that's a little Maldon Salt on top of the brownies, in case you were wondering. Back to (almost) square one I go. It's a challenge now to nail this chili-heat spiked brownie, but that's kind of the fun part, and I'll be approaching it from a bit of a different angle next time. Stay tuned.

THE BLUEBERRY SPICE BUTTERMILK MUFFIN

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If I'm going to eat a blueberry muffin there are two requirements: 1. Lots of blueberries, it's a BLUEBERRY muffin after all, and 2. It's not a cupcake, so hold back on the sugar please. You can go right ahead and feel pretty good about starting your day with these muffins. Thanks to all those blueberries, they're loaded with antioxidants and very easy on the sugar. Heck, they're good for you, have 2. 

Blueberry Spice Buttermilk Muffins

Makes 12 regular-sized muffins

Preheat oven to 375°

½ cup unsalted butter at room temperature

½ cup sugar

2 eggs at room temperature

¾ cup buttermilk

1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

¾ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon kosher salt

½ teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

dash of ground cloves

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

1 heaping cup fresh blueberries

• Combine dry ingredients, set aside

• Cream butter and sugar together with a mixer. Then beat in eggs, followed by vanilla.

• Add dry ingredients a little at a time, alternating with a little buttermilk until all is combined.

• Carefully stir in the blueberries by hand. When I was a kid, my mom made blueberry muffins and accidentally mixed the blueberries into the batter with the mixer. We literally had BLUEberry muffins. They were still as good as they'd alway been, just an interesting color. 

• Scoop the batter into a lined muffin tin, trying to keep them all as even as possible.

• Bake at 375° for 25 to 30 minutes. They should be a nice golden-brown color when done.

Let cool just long enough to be able to touch them without burning yourself. Add a little butter and enjoy! Feel free to repeat.