EASY Apple Dumplings

These are super quick and easy (as the title might imply), and quite tasty.  I found this recipe (on allrecipes.com, and then tweaked it…just like pretty much every recipe I make), because I had a bunch of apples that were starting to reach their shelf life.  As you can see from my photo, I didn’t quite follow my own directions.  I didn’t peel the apples (much to The Squatch’s dismay), and I didn’t place the dumplings seam-side down in the pan (I didn’t wrap them with the seam on the flat side of the apple halves, next time I will try it that way).  Next time I will also make sure I have some freshly whipped up whipped cream…but The Beeb was sleeping, so I didn’t’ want to fire up the Mix Master.

Ingredients

1 (16 oz) can refrigerated flaky biscuit dough (jumbo biscuits)

4 apples – peeled, cored & halved

½ cup brown sugar

½ cup water

½ cup butter, melted

2 tsp vanilla extract

chopped walnuts (optional)

ground cinnamon

Instructions

1)  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2)  Lightly grease 9”x13” baking dish.  Separate biscuits and flatten each one into a circle.  Wrap one biscuit around each apple half and place, seam side down, in pan.

3)  In a small bowl, combine sugar, water, melted butter and vanilla.  Pour mixture over dumplings in pan.  Sprinkle walnuts on top of each dumpling (optional).  Sprinkle cinnamon over the dumplings.  Bake 35 to 40 minutes, until golden.  Serve hot.

enjoy!

 ~ j

Biscuits & Gravy

I know I've mentioned breakfast being our favorite meal around Casa de Sharp, and here's another breakfast recipe for you.  I made both recipes and then froze them for enjoyment at a later (lazier) date.  I froze the gravy in muffin pans and then transferred the little gravy muffins to a big zip-loc bag.  The biscuits are star-shaped because I don't have a biscuit cutter, but do have lots of fun cookie cutters.  The stars were just the right size, and I think they make pretty darn cute lil' biscuits.

Cute little stars served up with
some Boca breakfast sausages

Freezer Biscuits

Ingredients:

2 packages dry yeast

1/4 cup warm water

5 cups flour

1 tsp soda

1 tsp salt

1tbsp + 1 tsp baking powder

1/4 cup sugar

1 cup shortening

2 cups buttermilk

Instructions:

1) Dissolve yeast in warm water, set aside.  Sift flour, cut in shortening.  Add yeast and buttermilk to dry ingredients; mix well.  Knead quickly 20 to 30 times.  Cover and let rise in a warm place for 2 hours.

2) Punch down, roll 1/2" thick.  Cut with biscuit cutter.  Place on a cookie sheet, then freeze.  After frozen place in freezer bag until ready to serve.

3) To prepare:  Place unthawed on cookie sheet in cold oven.  Bake 400 degrees until brown, 25-30 minutes.

**My biscuits turned out a bit on the dense side, but everything I bake here in Denver turns out dense.  I will never be able to adjust for the elevation, so I've given up...but mostly because we're moving down in the world in a few months!  (good for many, many reasons, not just for my baking)  I also think the yeast I used was a little bit on the old side, AND of course, I refuse to use white flour.

The Boca Crumbles definitely made the
gravy less photogenic - I swear that's not cat food!

Country Gravy
Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp ground black pepper
pinch of ground thyme
4 cups milk

Instructions:
Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat.  Whisk in the flour, salt, pepper and thyme until smooth.  Cook and stir over medium heat until browned, about 10 minutes.  Gradually stir in milk so that no lumps form, and continue cooking and stirring until thickened.  If they gravy becomes too thick, you may thin it with a little more milk.
** I added Boca crumbles to this batch of gravy while I was heating it, which made it look a bit like canned cat food and not very photogenic...but it was really tasty!!

enjoy!
 ~ j