I just finished reading an advanced copy of "Moonlight Becomes You," a supernatural thriller that takes place in the deep south a few years after the conclusion of the Civil War.  I was lucky enough to get an advance copy because I used to be in a critique group with the author, Robert Herald.  As life got complicated, I had the leave the group a few years ago, before he'd finished the manuscript, & I always wondered what happened to the characters.  So it was a real treat for me to read the finished novel and sate my curiosity.  You are welcome to read my reviews on BookBub or Goodreads, but in short I do recommend the book as an easy, entertaining read.  If gothic horror is your go-to, "Moonlight Becomes You" is very suitable for a lazy weekend or vacation--especially if it's a vacation to the deep south!  

The cover tells you everything you need to know.

    As is my wont, when I review a book I like to pair it with food: the only thing better than a good book is a good book and a tasty snack.  In this case, reading about humid August nights in old Virginia made me crave those classic comfort foods of the region.  I recommend "Moonlight Becomes You" with a plate of cornbread an molasses, washed down with a tall glass of iced sweet tea.*  And if you don't already have a good cornbread recipe on hand, allow me to suggest this simple alternative: Cornmeal Spoon Biscuits.  This is my own recipe, adapted from Dori Greenspan's Maple Cornmeal Drop Biscuits (which are sooooo good), but tweaked to emphasize the cornbread flavor & better compliment a drizzling of molasses.  Enjoy!

These are small & light, so I'd never serve less than three per person.  Plus, more opportunities to play around with toppings & spreads!

Cornmeal Spoon Biscuits

Ingredients:

1 Cup AP Flour

2/3 Cup Yellow Corn Flour (super-find cornmeal)

1/3 Cup White Cornmeal (masa works fine)

1 Tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

3 Tablespoons golden brown sugar

3/4 stick (6 Tablespoons) unsalted butter, cold, cut into pieces about the size of a nickel

2/3 Cup cold whole milk

molasses (for serving)

Directions:

    - Preheat oven to 400 degrees & line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.

    - In a medium bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients.  Drop in the butter and rub in with your fingertips until the consistency of damp sand.  (Unlike with buttermilk biscuits or pie dough, you do not want to leave larger bits of butter in your dough--the cornmeal means these biscuits will be tender rather than flakey.)

     - Pour the cold milk over.  Using a fork, toss & stir until the dough comes together.  Use a tablespoon to scoop rounded balls of dough & space them about 2 inches apart on your baking sheet.  Bake 15-18 minutes, or until golden brown on top.  Serve with molasses.

Drizzled with molasses, these are part of a very satisfying breakfast.  Also good for an afternoon snack.  Or a bowl of chili for dinner.  Ok I'm going to go eat another one.

*Yes, I realize it's still February, but between the book & the food it'll start to feel like summer in no time.  

      ...and I'm going to have just arrived in Hawaii.  From Ohio.  That's a 5 hour time difference.  Add in the bizarre exhaustion that comes with doing nothing but sitting on a plane, and I will be in no state to be baking anything.  So I want to live vicariously through you!
      Your mission - and you'd be insane not to accept it - is to celebrate National Sticky Bun Day* by making the best gosh darn breakfast buns you've ever eaten this weekend!  Now go forth, my comrades, and BAKE!

Are you drooling yet?

      A sticky bun is defined here in the U.S. as a strip of leavened dough, rolled into a tight spiral bun, tucked side-by-side with it's fellows into a pan lined with a sugary, buttery, and often nutty mixture.  When the buns are done baking they are flipped out of the pan upside down, so that the yummy sugary bottom is now the scrumptious top, rather like a tarte tartin.  But there are those who will bake them individually, or right-side-up, or with no nuts, or use a cream cheese glaze, and frankly I love breakfast so much I don't really care.
      If you need inspiration, here are some recipes I can personally recommend.  This first one really does make the best darn sticky rolls I've ever eaten.  The honey in the glaze adds that perfect extra flavor, so don't go with the cheap processed stuff, get some good, raw, wildflower honey.  I also recommend adding 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg in with the cinnamon, just because I love it so much.
      Now for those of you who prefer cinnamon rolls to sticky buns, I hear where you're coming from.  And I am not so much a purist that I would discount a delicious cinnamon roll as a tribute to the coming holiday.  So: here is Alton Brown's recipe for cinnamon rolls, which can be made the night before (always a good thing).  They served my in-laws very well this last Christmas, and I am happy to eat them any time.
      And finally, the last word in cinnamon rolls, ever: this recipe from Bon Appetit magazine is my all-time, hands-down, no-arguments favorite breakfast roll.  They call for Yukon Gold potatoes (which you MUST NOT substitute), and they can't really be made the day before, but they are worth every minute and every penny.  Trust me.
      So, what did you make, and how did it turn out?  Tellmetellmetellme!  I've spent enough time eating pastry and dreaming about Hawaii.  Now I want to spend time in Hawaii dreaming of pastry.



*Not a breakfast bun person?  Well, February 20th is National Cherry Pie Day.  So get crackin'!

      Lately, the sun hasn't been sleeping well. It's groggy, and doesn't want to roll out of bed when it's supposed to. So it drags a sheet of ragged cloud across the horizon and blearily peeks its pink face through from time to time. This means the first couple hours of morning are hazy, the light a diffuse shade of real strawberry lemonade, full of the lazy sounds of crickets. It's the kind of morning for wetting your fingertips on the condensation around your iced coffee, both you and the sun working up to a day of brightness.

      I am not a southerner - in fact I've only visited the Deep South twice, and briefly both times - but something about a hot, humid summer day makes me crave southern food. Visions of pan fried chicken, collard greens, and hot buttermilk biscuits dripping with butter and honey pop into my head, egged on by the sound of cicadas outside my window. And the next thing I know, I'm sweating over a stove instead of dining on cool, crisp salad like a sane person. *sigh* My stomach rules me.
     I wish I had my own recipe for fried chicken to share with you, but the truth is, Alton Brown's Pan Fried Chicken is the most delicious thing that could happen to that barnyard bird, and I'm smart enough not to mess with perfection. Follow the directions exactly and you'll be up convinced heaven is something that comes on a plate. I also wish I had my own recipe for collard greens, but I'm still wrangling that one--when I get it down, you'll be the first to know. I suspect my friend Addi has one and I just need to wheedle it from her. What I DO have (and what I made for breakfast this morning) is a recipe for Buttermilk Biscuits. Now back in May I posted a recipe for herbed buttermilk biscuits, which accentuates things like fresh ramps, chives, rosemary or thyme really, really well. But if you just want a true, straight-up buttermilk biscuit I actually recommend this recipe instead.*
      Now as I stated earlier, I am not a southerner, which means I do not possess that secret they share among themselves down in Alabama, Georgia and the rest that enables them to create clouds in baked-good form. Desperately - and for years - I have searched for an answer: is it the flour? The humidity? Do they feed their cows differently in that part of the country!?! Whatever it is, I haven't got it quite perfect...but I've gotten pretty damn close. I started with a biscuit recipe from Dori Greenspan's "Baking" cookbook (that woman is pretty much the goddess of baked goods--her shortcake recipe is foolproof, I tell you, FOOLPROOF!), but it wasn't quite what I was looking for. Then I took in a few tips from Good Eats, in terms of ingredients and - just as important - the manipulation thereof. The result is my recipe below. And if you have a better one (hint hint, every person in Mississippi), please send it my way.

Z.D.'s Pure Buttermilk Biscuits

1 & 1/2 Cup all-purpose flour
1/2 Cup cake flour + more for dusting
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons shortening, frozen & cut into bits
3 Tablespoons cold unsalted butter, diced
1 Cup cold buttermilk

 - Preheat your oven to 450º F, and line a baking sheet with parchment or silicone.

 - Whisk together your dry ingredients. Why the two different flours? A.B. swears the 3:1 ratio is as good as biscuit flour (something that supposedly is available in the south, but I was unable to find in two different grocery stores in Louisiana--maybe they hide it from Yankees). Also, be sure that your baking soda & powder are not too old. Ideally, you shouldn't ever have any older than six months, but unless you bake a lot that's unlikely. If you want fluffy biscuits, however, your leavening has got to be up to snuff. Make sure you keep a generous half cup of cake flour for dusting your surface and also for dipping your biscuit cutter!

 - Cut in the fats using your fingertips. Yes, use your fingertips. If your hands are hot, run them under cold water for a minute, then dry quickly and get started. You want a pebbly mixture when you're done, with fat-&-flour-bits ranging in size from oat flakes to sand grains to lentils.


 - Gently toss in the buttermilk until just barely combined. Turn out the dough onto a (cake) floured surface, dust with cake flour, and fold four times. As I mentioned in my last biscuit post, this does seem counter-intuitive: every good biscuit baker knows if you handle the dough too much, it becomes tough! But A.B. learned this technique from his grandma, and frankly, it works.


 - Pat the dough to about a one inch thickness. Using a metal biscuit cutter (they really do work best) cut straight down, then give a small twist as you remove the cutter. Again, I don't know why, but it works really well. Once you've cut as many biscuits as you can, gather the scraps and quickly and gently work them back together into another inch-thick pat of dough, then resume cutting. Continue until all dough is used.

See that one in the uppermost right? That's the last biscuit, molded from the scraps rather than shaped with a biscuit cutter. Watch how it comes out.

 - Place your biscuits on your prepared baking sheet, almost touching but not quite. See, the leavening will make the biscuits rise in all directions, so if they're close together most of the rising will be upward, making taller, fluffier biscuits. I put my biscuits in a honeycomb pattern to maximize proximity.

Behold the mutant biscuit in the upper corner!

 - Bake until just golden brown, about 16 to 18 minutes. Let cool on pan for a minute or two, then serve nice and warm, with plenty of butter, honey, and whatever else you like to slather on those puppies. I like to put a fried egg n one of mine and let the biscuit catch the yolky-goodness.

There's the mutant biscuit again. I tell myself nobody else will want it because it's weirdly shaped--more yum for me!

*Yeah, only somebody ruled by her stomach actually bothers with coming up with TWO freakin' recipes for buttermilk biscuits. You have my permission to mock me. But you probably won't, once you taste the biscuits.


P.S. - Just in case you're wondering what's going on in writer land: since deciding my current project needs to be more than one book, I've stopped working on the story and resumed tweaking the outline. I have a feeling this may take a few days. So the ambitious goal of actually finishing the whole first draft by today was - as I suspected - a pipe dream. No new clothes for me.
      But who needs clothes when I have fresh biscuits?!

     If you've ever made biscuits, scones, or pie crust dough from scratch, you've probably seen the baking instruction: "Cut in the butter." (Unless you make oil pie crusts, in which case...well...just keep reading.) In baking terms, this means to take small chunks of cold culinary fat (i.e. butter, shortening or lard) and using some method of force to reduce it to teeny tiny bits thoroughly combined with your flour mixture. The fat then melts during the baking process, creating that flaky texture we all love. Some people cut in the butter with their fingers. Other people use two knives (a tactic I have never attempted), or a pastry cutter (a fascinating looking device), or a food processor. When I got married, one of my wedding gifts was a food processor, and upon receiving this excellent gizmo I began using it to cut the fat into all my pastries.
     Until Alton Brown set me straight.
     Not in person. If I ever met Alton Brown in person I would either flip out into permanent Squee-mode or enter the next level of culinary nirvana, from which I'm pretty certain I would be unable to type. The same goes for Dorie Greenspan, my other distant food sensei. You will hear these two names - plus Julia Child - mentioned a lot in my food-related entries. After my family, these geniuses have helped my kitchen prowess develop the most.
     But back to the butter! In another highly instructive episode of "Good Eats" (don't ask me which one, they all blur together into an amusing-yet-instructive mental mishmash) A.B. explained that cutting in fat wasn't just about reducing its size, but also about coating the little fat particles with flour, so that the flour better absorbs the oils. Then Dorie Greenspan explained in her brilliant cookbook Baking (freaking love that title, incidentally) that having uniform size pieces of fat would decrease the flaky quality--it's better to have several sizes, ranging from kosher-salt-size to small-pea-size. And this is essentially impossible to achieve with a food processor.
     Thus enlightened, I now always ensure my fats are thoroughly chilled, that I have rinsed my own fingers with cold water and quickly dried them (helps prevent my hands from melting the butter), and that I pinch-and-squish (another way of describing "cutting in") the fats quickly until they are of varying size. I can honestly say this has made a notable improvement to my already pretty darn tasty baked goods. So I encourage you to try this at home, and offer the following recipe as practice (we'll do pie crust another day--I'm looking at YOU, oil-crusters!).

Z.D.'s Herbed Buttermilk Biscuits

1 & 3/4 Cup all-purpose flour
1/3 Cup cake flour + more for dusting (yes, you really need this--trust me!)
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 Tablespoon baking powder
2 t sugar (you can round up to 1 T if you want, but I like these a bit more savory)
1/4 t kosher salt, generous
1 oz frozen shortening (about 2 T--I just always keep a jar of 1 T blobs of shortening in my freezer)
4 Tablespoons cold sweet cream (salted) butter, cut into small pieces
2 teaspoons (or more) finely chopped fresh herbs
3/4 Cup cold buttermilk (or 1 T white vinegar + 3/4 C whole milk, rest for 5 min)

- Pre-heat your oven to 425 degrees, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat (I love me my Silpat!).

- Whisk together the dry ingredients in a medium sized bowl. Add the shortening and the butter, and cut in until pebbly (biggest pieces like a small pea, smallest like kosher salt). Now, why am I using salted butter, you ask? Because if you're like me, you've noticed that EVERY baking recipe these days call for unsalted butter, but you keep running out, and you have all this salted butter sitting in your fridge that's getting totally neglected and is probably going to start picking up weird aromas here soon because it's not getting used quickly enough! The unsalted butter thing is about allowed more control over the amount of salt in your baking, which is a good thing, but honestly? In something like savory biscuits? A tiny bit more or less isn't going to make a huge difference! So I use salted butter for this recipe and it works out just freaking fine!

- Toss in the chopped herbs. This is a great way to use up leftover herbs sitting in your fridge before they go bad. I like to use rosemary or thyme the best, but anything will work. Also, ramps are EXCELLENT when they're in season, but go ahead and use 2 Tablespoons worth because they're so nummy!

- Drizzle in the cold milk and toss with a fork until just combined. Use the extra cake flour to heavily dust a good dough surface (You know those recipes that say "a lightly floured surface?" They lie.) and turn out the dough. Dust the top lightly with a bit more cake flour, then knead gently about four times. Yes, I know this seems contrary - after all, this is biscuit dough, and the more it's handled the tougher it will be! - but just a few kneads work wonders, so go ahead and give it a try. Then pat out the dough into about a 1/2 to 3/4 inch even thickness, and use a 2 inch biscuit cutter to cut out rounds (press straight down, then gave a small twist before lifting back up). You should get about 8 rounds. Place them on your prepared baking sheet just a hairs-breadth from touching each other (this helps them rise more). Pop 'em in the oven, and bake 14 - 18 minutes, until fawn brown on top and just starting to fill your kitchen with that lovely aroma.

Now, if you don't want to bake these right away, you can wrap the dough rounds tightly in plastic and foil and freeze them up to two months. Just pop 'em still frozen like a biscuit-cicle onto a lined pan and bake for 18-22 minutes instead. Permit me the following suggestion: cut the dough into much smaller biscuit - about one inch across or slightly smaller - and freeze the dough. The next time you're invited to a party and asked to bring an appetizer, bake these just before going so they're fresh and warm, and serve with a lovely soft chevre or other spreadable cheese on the side. People will sigh lusciously as they devour them!