Italian herb and cheese biscuits

In my family we love bread! We love to eat bread with our soups, chicken and dumplings and pastas. A couple years ago I started making biscuits out of bisquick when I made chicken and dumplings, I basically just followed the biscuit recipe on the box and then topped them with 
cheese. We liked it and it paired well with the dumplings. 

Then one day I made pasta and didn't have garlic bread, so I made canned biscuits and added 
garlic salt and cheese to the top, they were also good. I eventually quit buying garlic bread and just doing this method.

 So over the course of two years I have evolved those two quick biscuit recipes and created my own Italian herb and cheese biscuits from scratch. They are amazing!(and healthier than canned)  Everyone who eats them loves them and always asks me for the recipe. We eat them with chicken and dumplings, soup, pasta, spaghetti, they go good with a lot of meals!

 I also have a second version that I call cheddar biscuits and they are very similar but without the herbs and I put more cheese in those. They both taste different even though they have almost the same ingredients. Both are equally excellent! So I thought I would share my famous biscuit recipes with ya"ll(don't you feel special?).  I usually double the recipe because my family of five inhales these things fast! 


Italian herb and cheese biscuits:

Ingredients:
2 cups all purpose WHITE flour(I use hodgson mills all natural)
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1/2 Teaspoon sea salt
2 Tablespoon of sugar
1/4 cup butter (stick butter, salted)
1 Tablespoon of Extra virgin olive oil
3/4 cup of 2% milk
1 Tablespoon of Italian seasoning blend
1/2 Teaspoon of garlic powder
1/2 cup of thick shredded cheddar cheese(I use mild cheddar)
Pinch of parsley (for top)

Directions:

Combine all dry ingredient and and cheese and blend well with whisk.

Cut butter into cubes and cut in butter until resembles coarse bread crumbs(leaving small chunks of butter in the dough, this is important)

Slowly stir in milk and oil until all of it comes together to form a dough ball.

Turn out dough ball onto a heavily floured surface.

 Let rest for a couple of minutes and then knead for about a minute 

re-flour surface and roll out to about 1/2″ thick.

 Cut biscuits with floured biscuit cutter (I use a drinking glass)and place onto a buttered baking pan.

Form remaining dough into ball and repeat until all dough is made into biscuits. 

 Bake on 375 degrees in the oven for 15 minutes or so, or until the top is golden brown.

*update*
I recently decided to melt a little butter and add oregano,garlic powder,sea salt, onion powder, and mix it together and then spoon it out over the biscuits after they come hot out of the oven. They were amazing this way!! I didn't measure, I just sprinkled a little of each into the melted butter and whisked it together.

Cinnamon raisin granola cookies

Cinnamon Raisin Granola Cookies

2 sticks Butter (salted) Softened

1/2 cup Sugar

1-1/2 cup Brown Sugar

2 whole Eggs

1 Tablespoon Vanilla Extract

1-1/2 cup All-purpose Flour

1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda

1 teaspoon Baking Powder

2 Tsp cinnamon 

1 teaspoons Sea Salt

1-1/2 cup rolled oats

1 cup organic California raisins 

1/2 cups  organic Chocolate Chips (I used mini organic semi-sweet)

2 cups organic Krispy rice cereal (or Rice Krispies)

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream butter with sugars until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add vanilla and mix until blended.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, and kosher salt. Add to mixing bowl and mix till combined. 

After that, add in remaining ingredients in whatever quantity you prefer. Add more chocolate chips and raisins if you want, or you can add nuts if you would like(mine are nut free)

last add Krispy rice cereal(rice Krispies) mixing until just combined.

scoop balls of dough onto a cookie sheet. Bake until golden brown, then allow to cool on a rack.

Enjoy!

Freezer tip!

After you make your dough, save some for the freezer! Line a baking sheet with wax paper, scoop balls out onto pan and place another sheet of wax paper over top. Put into freezer until frozen, then pop them out into ziplock bags and save for another day! When you are ready to bake them, just place the frozen cookie dough onto a baking sheet and bake at 375 until golden brown :) 

Peanut butter chocolate chip granola

Yesterday I made granola for my sons 3rd birthday party. It was a hit so I thought I would pass on the recipe! Organic ingredients are optional, just use what you have :) 




Ingredients:

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup oil (sunflower or coconut oil is best, but you can use any) 

1/4 cup honey

4 cups old fashioned rolled oats

1 1/2 Tsp vanilla 

1/2 Tsp sea salt

1/2 cup organic raisins

1/2 cup organic dark chocolate chips

1/2 Tsp cinnamon

1/2 cup organic peanut butter

1/2 cup organic peanut butter chips

1 cup organic chocolate rice crispy cereal (I use koala crunch cereal from sprouts, they have chocolate or regular and its all natural ingredients) 

Directions:

Mix rice cereal, oats, raisins and salt in a large bowl, set to side.

In a saucepan add peanut butter, cinnamon, honey,brown sugar and oil and heat until melted and creamy, turn off heat, add vinilla extract and give it a good stir.

Now pour liquid mixture over oat mixture and stir with a spatula until mixed well and coats all the oats. Spread out on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 for about 15mins, stirring occasionally. Take out of oven and let cool COMPLETELY.

Now (after its cooled) add the chocolate chips and peanut butter chips. You can also add almonds or any other kind of nut(I would add the nuts before you cook it). I've also added sunflower seeds to mine and it tasted great! 

Enjoy!
P.S sorry for the bad phone picture!   

New blog!

I decided to make a whole new page just for recipes, I'm going to start adding more craft tutorials and things to the other page, along with my random ramblings of whatever is on my mind. So I thought it would be much easier to find recipes here on this page. Feel free to jump over to my other blog craftybyTB anytime if you are bored or what not.

So now a little about myself and this blog,
I am not a fancy expert chef, I think a real chef would cringe watching me cook. I have a bad habbit of not following recipes or directions and just doing my own thing. Sometimes it works out great, sometimes not so great. I love cooking and I've always been decently good at it (most of the time).  I like to experiment with food a lot. Sometimes my experiments are wonderful, and then other times I have to pick up my phone and hit the speed dial for Pizza Hut because my experiment is stuck so hard to the pan I have to throw the whole pan away (yes that really happened just the other week).
 But hey, that's okay! That's how you learn right?

 Now  I promise to only post recipes that have passed the test and have the husband and children stamp of approval! Some (a lot) of my recipes are my moms recipes and I grew up eating them, only I changed them. Not because they weren't good or anything, just because I'm a stubborn daughter and I like to make things my own way (sorry mom). I have also collected recipes from pinterest and I like to try a new one every once in a while off that site.

I LOVE my crockpot, especially in the winter and Tball season. I also love my outdoor grill in the summer, mostly because that means my husband is doing the cooking. (If only he would do the cleaning too, I'm still working on that ;)

I'm a Oklahoma girl, so I love southern style, old fashioned cookin. I am aware that a lot of southern style food isn't the healthiest, so I try to improve my old grandma recipes and make them a tad bit healthier, but there are a few here and there that you just don't mess with (like chocolate sheet cake and loaded mash potato casserole, yuuuum). So you will see some super healthy organic recipes, and then some butter lovers dream recipes.

Enjoy!