Dienstag, 20. April 2010

TWD: Sweet Cream Biscuits

During Lenten Season I became almost an expert for baking scones and biscuits, as they can mostly be made without sugar. So when I read that Melissa of Love At First Bite chose Sweet Cream Biscuits (p. 23 in Dories book) for this weeks TWD-session, I was excited  on the one side ("Juhu, something I CAN do! Something I am not a complete novice about!"), but a bit dissappointed on the other side ("Oh no, not biscuits - again. I made soooo many of them the weeks between Mardi Gras and Easter").
After considering all the ups and downs I decided that in the end I do love baking savory things, I do love eating biscuits, and I enjoyed the routine I was going through during Lenten Season (waking up, jogging for 50-60 mins, bathroom, baking, having a big, big breakfast/brunch with fresh baked quick breads). So - hooray for this pick!!

The category "quick breads" is more than appropriate. Because you use heavy cream instead of butter, you don't even have to think about cutting and freezing the fat (what I usually would do for about half an hour to make sure the butter is really, really cold). Just mix the few ingredienst, and you are ready to go!

As I made so many breakfast treats recently, I was in the mood for playing around. I have a lot of ramson because it is the season for it and whole Vienna (or at least its parks and gardens) smells for it. And the restaurants will use it in the weeks to come in so many variants, that in the end, no matter how much you like it, we will all be completely fed up with it and glad the season is over, so we get a whole year to recover. For sure, before next February ends, most Viennese will crave for their ramson risotto, ramson sauces of all kinds, ramson patties ...
I really love it, and as I am allergic to garlic, this is a perfect substitute. (For the allergy: Very long, very sad story... I used to like garlic a lot and didn't find out until some years ago. Well, let's face it, there are worse allergies than this. It's in my own hands to avoid it. But I very often forget to ask in restaurants, and sometimes don't recognize it, when it is not too dominant. And then the rest of the day/evening is to be forgotten, and it's best to go home....)
(Btw.: Is ramson really the right word? It is a herb that smells like garlic, but is botanically something completely different. I also found the translation "bears garlic" or "wild garlic", what might be wrong because what I am talking about has nothing do to with garlic?)

Since I made my first biscuits I found out what biscuit cutters are, but as they are not to be found round here, I just used high cookie cutters shaped like stars.
Additionally to some finely chopped ramson I mixed in a tiny little bit of Parmesan. I have no idea how much I used, I just went with my intuition.

For the ramson - I am a big fan! The parmesan would maybe not have been necessary, but after all I didn't really taste it anyways.
The ramson makes the biscuits look very pretty on the plate (on the pictures below you can indeed only see the little test piece with ramson and one of the plain Sweet Cream Biscuits), and the taste is wonderful.

Sure, this only works if you don't eat your biscuits with jam or other sweet spreads :o]
 




(Breakfast as I like it most - mixed vegetable salad, ham, some excellent cheese (buffalo brie), the newspaper - and homemade, still slightly warm biscuits)