More baking!!! (Part 1)

So baking day fell on Wednesday this week...

Ah... must start off with a cup of tea...

So I started off with the next recipe in line in the Martha Stewart Baking Handbook. So let's just say that this started out with me thinking that this recipe was going to be a complete and utter disaster!! I made the Cream Cheese and Chive biscuits.

Here is the recipe:

Cream Cheese and Chive Biscuits (Martha Stewart)

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh chives *I used about a TBL dried*
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, cold, cut into small pieces
4 ounces cream cheese, cold, cut into small pieces
1 1/4 cup buttermilk

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper; set aside. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar, and chives. Using a pastry blender, cut in the butter and cream cheese until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs with a few larger clumps remaining.

Pour in the buttermilk; using a fork, mix in buttermilk until incorporated and the dough just comes together. The dough will be slightly sticky; do not overmix.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured work surface. With floured fingers, gently knead about four times, until all the crumbs are incorporated and the dough is smooth. With a lightly floured rolling pin, gently roll the dough to a 8-b-11-inch rectangle, about 1 inch thick. Using a bench scraper or long offset spatula to lift the ends of the dough, fold the rectangle into thirds (like a business letter). Give the dough a quarter turn. Roll out the dough again (to the same dimensions), and repeat the folding process. Wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Return the dough to the work surface. Roll out as before, and repeat the folding process. Give the dough another quarter turn; roll out dough one more time, again into a rectangle about 1 inch thick. Using a sharp knife, divide the rectangle into 12 equal squares or rectangles. Place on prepared sheet about 1 1/2 inches apart. Refrigerate for 1 hour. (at this point you could also freeze the biscuits…to cook, simply put the frozen biscuits on a parchment lined sheet and proceed with baking)

Preheat the oven to 424° F. Bake, rotating the sheet halfway through, until the biscuits are golden and flecked with brown spots, 15 to 18 minutes. Transfer the bicuits to a wire rack to cool.
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Ok so I followed the recipe exactly (except for the dried chives) and as soon as I added the buttermilk I knew I was in trouble. The dough was a wet (slightly sticky is a joke!!), goopy mushy mess!!! There was no way on earth this dough was going to be ROLLED out. But I was determined this was going to work somehow! Let me just insert here to say when I started this I was not even in the mood to make these because of all the steps involved... So I "turned out the dough" onto a VERY floured surface and kneaded in probably about a cup (A CUP!!) more flour just to make it slightly manageable.

Notice all the flour mounded up and the rolling pin and spatula covered in goo... I looked for a link to this recipe and couldn't find one anywhere, even on the Martha Stewart website, just so you could see in there pictures how this dough is "supposed" to look like. So not how this turned out!!

So I continued on with the recipe as directed hoping that somewhere along the way it would get better. Ha. No such luck. Even after refrigerating it was still very unmanageable. But I managed to get them rolled out and folded as best I could and into squares and in the fridge.

In the meantime I worked on my valentine's cookies, which thankfully turned out marvelously!!:)

So after refrigerating the dough for the second time I just couldn't wait till James got home for supper to try these biscuits, I just knew they would be rubbery and unedible and I was going to be sooo disappointed. Well... MUCH to my surprise, as they baked they started looking a little bit better!!!

By the time they were done baking they smelled really good!! So I cracked open a hot biscuit fresh from the oven and imagine my surprise when I took the first bite. They were edible!! And not only that they were actually quite tasty!!!  Yum!

So I will definitely be trying these again. But, with a few modifications... The notes written in my cookbook say, "Increase flour, decrease liquid" I'll let ya know if I ever come up with the perfect combo...

All this biscuit madness, add a baby on the crowded counter top and you have a mess!! This pic cracks me up because it looks like he is totally mocking my sad hunk of biscuit dough:) And no he was not exactly a happy camper up there watching me make such a mess...

The finished, and surprisingly yummy product!

Mmmm...

I only baked 5 of these and froze the rest on a tray and then put them in a freezer bag to be baked fresh later. Maybe more for supper tonight!:)

Come back for part 2 where I will show you my much more successful Valentine's Day cookies:)