Weekend cooking -- Batter Biscuits and Red Velvet Gooey Butter Cake

I had a pretty successful cooking day on Sunday.  I made the Dirty Rice in my previous post for dinner.  And, earlier in the day, I made these two things.

Batter Biscuits
I've been trying to figure out where this recipe actually originated but without much luck.  I found it on healthyhomerecipes.com.  When I searched for it, I also found it on bigoven.com.  So, I'm not trying to swipe someone else's recipe -- I always try to give credit to the place I found the recipe.

This recipe is very similar to Yorkshire pudding, except that it is made with buttermilk and in mini-muffin pans.  They were really good -- crunchy on the outside and moist on the inside.  My family love them and begged me to make more.

1 t salt
1/2 T baking powder
1/4 t baking soda
2 1/3 c flour
1 quart buttermilk (or more as needed)
2 eggs
1/2 lb butter

Preheat oven to 425.  Mix dry ingredients.  Add buttermilk until the consistency of pancake batter.  Beat eggs and add to batter.  Batter must be slightly thinner than pancake batter and beaten until very smooth.

Melt butter.

Put 1/2 t butter in each hole of mini-muffin tins.  Heat in preheated oven until butter is very hot.  Spoon 1 T batter into each hole.  Bake for 20 minutes.

Makes 5 dozen biscuits.


Red Velvet Gooey Butter Cake
From bunsinmyoven.com

Ingredients

For the cake:
• 1 box mix for red velvet cake
• 1 egg
• 8 tablespoons butter, melted
For the filling:
• 8 ounces cream cheese, softened
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 8 tablespoons butter, melted
• 16 ounces (about 4 cups) powdered sugar

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Combine the cake mix, egg, and butter and mix well. It will be thick and difficult to mix. Pat the mixture into the bottom of a lightly greased 13 by 9-inch baking pan.
3. In the bowl of your stand mixer, beat the cream cheese until smooth. Add the eggs, vanilla, and butter and beat together. Add the powdered sugar and mix until completely combined.
4. Spread the cream cheese mixture over cake batter and bake for 40 to 50 minutes. Make sure not to over bake as the center should be a little gooey.

Awesome Dirty Rice recipe

For some strange reason, a couple weeks ago I decided I needed to make dirty rice from scratch.  I started looking for recipes.  I needed to find one that didn't require chicken livers or gizzards.  I found quite a few.  But I was still hesitant.  So, I got in touch with one of my brothers in New Orleans to see what he thought.  He just happened to be with a female friend of his at the time that I called him.  And she gave me the list of ingredients and a couple of hints.  Here's what I threw together with their help.

 Granted, it isn't pretty.  But it was phenomenal!

Rene and Jayme's Dirty Rice

2 1/2 c white rice
3T butter
2T olive oil
4 c beef broth
2c water
1 lb ground beef
2 onions, chopped very finely
1/2 green pepper, chopped very finely
2 stalks celery, chopped very finely
4 green onions
1 pkg dry onion soup mix
Cajun seasoning to taste
Cayenne pepper to taste

Brown rice in butter and olive oil.  Add broth and water.  Bring to boil and cook for 20-25 minutes, until rice is done.

In separate pan, brown ground beef.  Add vegetables, soup mix, seasoning and pepper.  cook until vegetables are soft. (Save green tops of green onions for later)

Add ground beef/vegetable mixture to rice.  Add salt to taste.  Add green onion tops


Hint: Even if you don't like green peppers, don't skip them.  They really add something.