Lemon Cupcakes and Buttermilk Biscuits

If you haven't visited the Tasty Kitchen website yet, bookmark it now, because it is the single best recipe finding site I have found.  I get lots of ideas and links to recipes at Tasty Kitchen from the Pioneer Woman's blog, and I have loved every single thing I've made from the recipes I have tried.  One of my first TK experiments was for these delicious Mini Lemon Loaves.  Lemon is probably my absolute favorite recipe ingredient, and especially in dessert form.  The first time we made them (Lilah is my right-hand girl when it comes to baking), we were both licking the batter off the spatula and from the bowl in great anticipation for the tasty loaves baking in the oven.  We were not disappointed - they were just lemony enough, super moist, and a perfect melt-in-your-mouth consistency.  I knew that it would be a go-to recipe for me, but I wanted to adapt it a little to make it more cake-like.  So we made them again last week as a treat for Memere and Grandpa (Matt's parents) to celebrate their anniversary when they came to visit.  I just substituted cake flour for the all-purpose and used cupcake tins instead of loaf pans.  They came out great, although I have to say I liked the loaf version just a bit more.  I didn't really do step-by-step pictures of this one, but I did take a few while we were making the cupcakes:



First, you must lick the butter.  With the wrapper on.  Yep, girl takes after her momma.

 You can click on the link for the instructions, but we mixed up our yummy batter (secret ingredient: sour cream), poured it into cupcake tins, then proceeded to take some silly pictures and shamelessly lick the sinfully delicious batter off the spatula, from inside the bowl, and possibly the bits that dripped onto the countertop.

See?  Shameless, I tell you, shameless.

This is our "Happy Face" pic.

Then Lilah wanted to do "Serious Face".

And, finally, "Silly Face".  Pay no attention to the bags under my eyes.  I get up too early and stay up too late.

This is where I should have a picture of the final product.  But I don't.  Possibly because my camera battery needed charging, and possibly because we ate all the cupcakes before I thought about it.  Anyway, I'll be making them again, so I'll try to post a picture at a later date.

The other TK recipe I want to share today is for Buttermilk Biscuits.  Seriously, these babies are so easy to make, and you probably have all of the ingredients in your kitchen right now.  If you don't have buttermilk, you can make your own using regular milk and vinegar, but I'm too lazy to Google the exact process at the moment.  I did take step-by-step pictures of this one, though.




See, this is all you need to make these lovelies.  Well, except for the 7 tbs of butter I had chilling in the freezer.

You just mix your dry ingredients...(I love this spatula I got from Matt's grandmother - it came in a set, and it's from Prepology.  Not a paid advertisement.)

Then you cut in your butter, make a "well", and pour in your buttermilk and mix.

Form your dough into a rectangle-ish shape...

And cut out circles with a biscuit cutter.  Or a glass, if you're like me and don't own a biscuit cutter because you never remember that you need one when you are at a kitchen store, instead you just keep buying cupcake tins that you think you need.  Or cookie scoops that break the first day you use them. 

Brush the tops with buttermilk (use your *clean* fingers if again, you are like me, and keep forgetting to get a pastry brush.).  Toss them in the oven and bake, then devour that little baby one you made with the leftover dough while it's still hot from the oven.  Yummmmmmm........

So there you have it.  My first official recipe experiments here on the blog.  Let me know how they turn out if you try them!