EllenFork

Decorative Gourds and Other Fall Ephemera: Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

Some very attractive decorative gourds

It's Fall in San Francisco, the land of eternal Autumn and an average of 56 degrees F. Really, this is my first true fall here in the city, after moving to the Bay Area in January 2010. Last year I was in the midst of my culinary externship in New Orleans, romping around in the relief of tolerably cooler weather and dressing up as a toddler from Toddlers and Tiaras for Halloween. There is no better place to spend Halloween than New Orleans, specifically Frenchman Street, where dancing in the street with costumed strangers goes laaaaate into the night.

This year things are a little different around here...as in I have graduated from culinary school, gotten married and am expecting a little girl in January! Yes, an actual human baby that is an as-yet unnamed girl!! So, no rampant boozing in ridiculous costumes for me this fall. As restitution, I am eating more cake-related items. Yeah yeah, pregnancy cliché... but I'm actually ok with a pumpkin whoopie pie instead of a glass of wine (for now) so that's what this post going to cover. Also, I'm going to just tra-la-la-la waltz right into a blog post about whoopie pies and telling you all that I'm graduated, pregnant and married and act like it's completely normal to just drop that kind of information on people. So, deal with it.

As for the whoopie pies... they are just straight up delicious y'all.There is something about the texture of these lil guys that is addictive. It's like a cupcake and a cookie had a baby and then that baby got slathered in delicious cream cheese frosting... yep. And, it's fall so of course it's time for some pumpkin flavored goodies! If you aren't ravenously consuming squash-flavored desserts and coffee beverages, you better get your shit TOGETHER. ASAP. These kinds of things have a limited shelf life! After Thanksgiving it's gonna be all "peppermint and hot chocolate" and you're going to wish you'd taken more time to relish all the brown-orangey goods that are currently so prevalent. Haven't you been looking at Pinterest, an online world dedicated to the glorification of seasonal crafts and snacks?! And on that note, I want to share something really special with you, my devoted readers. It's an essay from the online publication McSweeney's, and I feel it really encapsulates the spirit of autumn, with an ode to Decorative Gourd Season. I read it faithfully each year, with great reverence. Please enjoy, preferably with a pumpkin whoopie pie in hand!

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies with Cream Cheese Filling

Recipe adapted from Bon Appetit, October 2009

Yield: 18 cakes

Ingredients

Cream Cheese Filling

1 ½ cup powdered sugar, sifted
½  cup unsalted butter, room temperature
16 oz cream cheese
1 Tbsp Vanilla extract
2 Tbsp Maple syrup

Cakes

3 cups all purpose flour
1 Tbsp ground cinnamon
1 ½  tsp baking powder
1 ½  tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground ginger
Dash ground cardamom
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
¾  cup (packed) golden brown sugar
¾  cup sugar
½ cup vegetable oil
3 large eggs
1 15-ounce can pure pumpkin
½  cup milk
Nonstick vegetable oil spray

Filling:

In a stand mixer, using the paddle attachment, beat sugar, butter and cream cheese until fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add vanilla extract and maple syrup and beat until blended. Let stand at room temperature.

Cakes:

Sift together the first 7 ingredients into a large bowl. In the bowl of your stand mixer, beat butter and sugar until fully blended. (This recipe calls for more spices than the original- it would’ve been quite bland without at least this much of each spice, but I thought there was room for even more… add to your taste!)

Pouring in a thin stream, beat in oil. Add eggs (these should be room temperature) 1 at a time, making sure they are fully incorporated before adding the next.  Beat in pumpkin. Add half of dry ingredients, then milk, then the rest of the dry ingredients, beating to completely blend with each addition and scraping sides of the bowl. Chill batter for at least 1 hour. (I ended up using some of the batter the day I made it and using the rest the next day and it worked great).

In a cold oven, arrange 1 rack in bottom third of oven and 1 rack in top third of oven; preheat to 350°F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment; spray lightly with nonstick spray. (I highly recommend using two sheets at a time, or else you’ll be baking mini cakes all day). Spoon batter onto baking sheet to form cakes (about 3 level tablespoons each; about 12 per baking sheet), spacing apart. Let stand 10 minutes- this allows it to warm up a bit.

Bake cakes until tester inserted into centers comes out clean, which should take about 20 min. Rotate about halfway through baking. Cool cakes completely on baking sheets on rack. Using a small offset spatula, spread about 2 tablespoons filling on flat side of 1 cake. Top with another cake, flat side down (duh). Repeat with remaining cakes and filling.

Consume.

Happy Fall!

 

 

 

A Throne Fit for a Cake

 It's January. It's cold. It's the perfect time of year to hole up in your cozy apartment and just make things, food things. It's the time of year when braising, baking and roasting are the perfect methods of cooking, since it is really too cold to go out and do anything. Might as well lurk around with a myriad of cooking magazines, books and websites, plotting the next culinary foray.

This weekend I had planned my culinary entertainment around two very important and very new additions to my kitchen arsenal. First, the lovely red Le Creuset 5 1/2 quart dutch oven I received for Christmas. That fiery red siren has been calling my name since it's arrival in December, but I had yet to properly utilize it. Second, the absolutely lovely glass cake dome given to me by my friend Becca as a hostess gift. I've been prowling around in search of such a vessel for a while, until this baby just landed, literally, on my doorstep. When I saw the package outside my door, I was afraid I had sleep-ordered something off the internet.

Anyway, something had to be done to fill these two items with delectable foods. Little did I know that a winter snowstorm would leave me cozy and captive for all of Saturday! Perfect conditions for a baking, stewing bonanza.

I'll go ahead and tell you that the dutch oven was used for a Cassoulet, but I'm not blogging that one til later, since it has so many damn ingredients and I'm just not up for it at the moment. So instead I will tell you all about the lovely cake that I enthroned in the dome! Enthroned in the dome, enthroned in the dome, enthroned in the dome... say that one ten times fast. 

I used a recipe from Cooks Illustrated for the cake itself. Have I mentioned how much I love Cook's Illustrated? My mother gave me a subscription, and I fell for it, hard. I think it's the side by side comparison of appliances that truly speaks to me...and the step-by-step illustrated directions for dummies. For the icing I improvised on recipe from the Kitchen-Aid booklet that came with my stand mixer. Sometimes the best recipes are found in random places, like the instruction manual of an appliance or the back of a box. If you are dying to use a specific ingredient, I recommend looking on the maker's website or the back of the package for a recipe that is totally based around it. 

Here is a truly delicious, moist and totally perfected cake recipe:

Rich and Tender Yellow Cake

Makes two 9-inch cakes.    Published March 1, 1999 in Cook's Illustrated.  

To quickly bring the eggs and milk to room temperature (65°F), submerge them in a bowl of warm water for about 10 minutes after mixing them together. Adding the butter pieces to the mixing bowl one at a time prevents the dry ingredients from flying up and out of the bowl.

4	large eggs , room temperature
1/2	cup whole milk , room temperature
2	teaspoons vanilla extract
2 1/4	cups sifted cake flour (or if you only have all purpose, subtract 2 tbsp from each sifted cup)
1 1/2	cups granulated sugar
2	teaspoons baking powder
3/4	teaspoon table salt
1/2	pound unsalted butter (2 sticks), softened, each stick cut into 8 pieces

Instructions

1. 1. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Generously grease two 9-by-1 1/2-inch cake pans with vegetable shortening and cover pan bottoms with rounds of parchment paper or wax paper. Grease parchment rounds, dust cake pans with flour, and tap out excess.

2. 2. Beat eggs, milk, and vanilla with fork in small bowl; measure out 1 cup of this mixture and set aside. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in bowl of standing mixer fitted with paddle attachment; mix on lowest speed to blend, about 30 seconds. With mixer still running at lowest speed, add butter one piece at a time; mix until butter and flour begin to clump together and look sandy and pebbly, with pieces about the size of peas, 30 to 40 seconds after all butter is added. Add reserved 1 cup of egg mixture and mix at lowest speed until incorporated, 5 to 10 seconds. Increase speed to medium-high (setting 6 on KitchenAid) and beat until light and fluffy, about 1 minute. Add remaining egg mixture (about 1/2 cup) in slow steady stream, about 30 seconds. Stop mixer and thoroughly scrape sides and bottom of bowl. Beat on medium-high until thoroughly combined and batter looks slightly curdled, about 15 seconds longer. (To mix using hand mixer, whisk flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in large bowl. Add butter pieces and cut into the flour mixture with a pastry blender. Add reserved 1 cup of egg mixture; beat with hand mixer at lowest speed until incorporated, 20 to 30 seconds. Increase speed to high, add remaining egg mixture, and beat until light and fluffy, about 1 minute. Stop mixer and thoroughly scrape sides and bottom of bowl. Beat at high speed 15 seconds longer.)

3. 3. Divide batter equally between prepared cake pans; spread to sides of pan and smooth with rubber spatula. Bake until cake tops are light golden and skewer inserted in center comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes. (Cakes may mound slightly but will level when cooled.) Cool on rack 10 minutes. Run a knife around pan perimeter to loosen. Invert cake onto large plate, peel off parchment, and re-invert onto lightly greased rack. Cool completely before icing.

 

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting (adapted from Kitchen-Aid manual)

1/3 cup butter, softened

1/4 cup cream or evap. milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 splash almond extract, if you like

1/4 tsp salt

4 cups powdered sugar, divided

low-fat milk, if necessary

Place butter in mixer bowl. Attach bowl and flat beater to mixer. Turn to Speed 4 (see what I mean, I love how this recipe has the exact speeds, since it is made by KA!) and beat about 1 minute, or until creamy. Stop and scrape bowl. Add cream, vanilla, almond, salt and 1 cup powdered sugar. Turn to Stir Speed and mix about 30 seconds. Stop and scrape bowl. Stick your finger in and lick it. Turn to Speed 2 and mix about 1 1/2 minutes, or until well blended. Stop and scrape bowl.

Turn to stir speed. Gradually add remaining 3 cups powdered sugar and mix until blended. Stop and scrap bowl if necessary. Add milk, 1 tsp at a time, if necessary (I did). Turn to Speed 4 and beat about 1 minute or until smooth.

This makes enough for a two layer cake. Oh yeah, and I sprinkled PECANS all over the top!! Yum!

Make this for people you want to like you. After they eat it, they won't care what you said about their mother anymore. They'll like you. It's THAT kind of cake.

New Year, New Whatever

Well well well, here we are again at the beginning of a new year. I had just started to get used to the last one and now 2010 just comes out of nowhere, the jerk. Much like the rest of the populace, I am vowing to quit wallowing around in my own filth (figuratively of course). Naturally I am trying to eat healthier and exercise more, but I think everyone feels that way after swimming through the veritable pools of butter, wine and lard that come along with the holidays. Seriously, I'm on a lean meat, cruciferous veggie, cheese-reduced lifestyle bender and so far I feel way less sluggish. Additionally, two more realistic goals for this year are to BE POSITIVE!!!! and to TAKE ACTION!!! You know, do what I say I am going to do... kind of like the millions of times I swear up and down that I'm going to write a blog post (even going to far as to make and photograph something! There are many lovely posts waiting to debut in 2010...) and get distracted by something shiny. Shiny like my brand new RED KITCHEN AID ARTISAN MIXER! Boyfriend S. has scored major brownie points. And yes, that's a pun because I'm totally gonna make him BROWNIES WITH IT! God, I'm hilarious.

ANYWAY, who cares about my personal trials and tribulations. This post is about COOKIES, y'all. Yeah, yeah, I know I just said that I'm cutting down on the crap, but these cookies are actually good for you(ish). Cooking Light magazine says so. (PS- Has anyone noticed how much better that mag has gotten lately?? The pictures, the recipes, the columnists, it's all so much more readable. Many less Mom-ish articles (sorry moms) and ads for incontinence drugs)

The following recipe is one I snagged from this month's Cooking Light, but I've used various other oatmeal cookie recipes through the years to create chocolate-cherry oatmeal cookies. So, if you have your fave oatmeal cookie recipe, just throw in some cherries and chocolate and you're in biz. The actual title of these cookies is "Chocolate-Cherry Heart Smart Cookies", but I don't want to sound too healthy. I'm renaming them to...

Choco-Cherry Oatmeal Chompers

(by Marcie Dixon, featured in the Jan/Feb 2010 issue)

Ingredients:

1.5 oz (or 1/3 cup) all-purpose flour

1.5 oz (or 1/3 cup) whole-wheat flour

1 1/2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

6 tbsp unsalted butter

3/4 cup light brown sugar

1 cup dried cherries (I used Bing)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 large egg, lightly beaten

3 oz bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (I used semisweet chunks)

Cooking spray

First, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine flours and the next three ingredients (through salt) in a mixing bowl (the bowl of your pretty red stand mixer, if that's what you're using...). Stir with a whisk.

Meanwhile, melt butter in a small saucepan until melted. Remove from heat and add brown sugar, stirring until it becomes smooth. For me, they never fulling incorporated, but that doesn't seem to matter. Then add sugar mixture to the flour mixture and beat with a mixer at medium speed, until well blended.

Add cherries, vanilla and egg, beating until combined. Fold in chocolate. Drop the dough onto a silpat or greased cookie sheet by the tablespoon, 2 inches apart. Bake at 350 degrees for 12 minutes. Remove pans from oven and let sit for 3 minutes; then remove cookies from pans and cool on wire racks.

Yield: 30 cookies (although for some reason I only got 22...not sure why)

And because this is Cooking Light, here is the nutritional info!

Serving size: 1 cookie    Calories:94 Fat: 3.2g Protein: 1.5 g Carb: 15.7g annnnd who cares about the other values, these are enough. And, they're not so bad! So enjoy one of these lil cookies for breakfast or a quick snack during the day without feeling like a slob. You deserve it.

Happy New Year!

A Meeting of the Melons

A week or two ago, I was doing my standard lurking in Whole Foods when I came across a big, fat display of muskmelons. Heavy, slightly damp and green tinged, these melons whispered my name seductively as I passed. Their distinctive, earthy-sweet melon smell hung in fragrant clouds around the display, perfuming passerby as they hurried to and fro in search of other, shinier fruits. Hesitantly, I stopped. Oh, you tricky melons...how many times have I taken one of you home, only to carelessly let you rot on the counter top?

Basically, a lot.

This time, with an ice cream maker as my secret weapon, I vowed that this melon would not go to waste. I confidently hoisted a round, promising fellow from the pile and finished my binge-shopping. Any trip to Whole Foods feels like a shopping binge in my opinion, and although I would rather go to the weekend farmer's market, sometimes I NEED a ripe fruity treat in the middle of the week. Anyway, I hustled my melon home and left him sitting on the counter. For six days. On the seventh day, as the melon began to display his doubts of being eaten with the emerging presence of fruit flies, I made melon sherbet.

So, the slim difference between sorbet and sherbet (because I KNOW you were all asking yourselves this question), is that sherbet has milk or some other fat in it that makes it creamy. Sorbet is basically fruit, ice and sugar. I think melon is fantastic for sherbet. Melon puree has it's own natural creaminess, but with the addition of a little whole milk, honey and that crucial, tasty pinch of salt, it transcends. Summer, frozen against the winds of time in your freezer.

Melon Sherbet (from 101 Cookbooks)

• 1 pound of juicy, sassy melon (any variety with orange flesh, such as cantaloupe)

• 1/4 cup mild flavored honey (I would add half of this and taste, if your particular melon is really sweet, you may want to cut down on the honey)

• 1/2 cup whole milk

• generous pinch of salt

Cut the melon flesh from its rind into a medium bowl. I chopped into cubes and pureed in a blender. You will need 2 cups of puree.

Add the milk, and salt. Now blend in some of the honey and taste. Add more to taste, but be careful not to overpower the super-fresh taste of the melon. When it is flavored to perfection, pour into an ice-cream maker and freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions.

While the sherbet is delightfully slushy at this juncture, I recommend freezing for a couple more hours.

And for an added treat...

I had considered throwing a lemon cookie or gingersnap into the mix, but instead decided to go the all natural route. I sliced up a pineapple into thick rings, rubbed it with brown sugar and threw it on the grill for about 3 minutes on each side. You just want it to be warm and juicy, with light grill marks.

I let the pineapple cool, scooped in some sherbet and added a mint garnish. Tropical and delicious!

Enjoy!

A Shameless Tart

Again with the summer fruits. I can't help myself...this time though, we're talking apricots. Take a step outside your comfort zone, the zone where apricots are shriveled up little gnome-like fruits that hang out in bags of only sort of delicious trail mix. 

These apricots were for real. Which is why I made them into a tart. Because that's how they roll. Another recipe from the Zuni Cookbook, before I am forced to return it to the library (actually, as of this post, it is late). I love how Judy Rodgers writes these recipes as if she was in your kitchen with you, explaining this to you. The details are so specific! At one point she describes the consistency of the dough as "humid grape-nuts", which seems weird but you know exactly what she means when you see it! I can't really do it justice in my descriptions, you must buy or borrow the book to get the true experience. In the meantime, I will do my best to explain. Here goes.

Apricot Tart from Zuni Cafe

Ingredients:

Basic Tart Dough "with a little flake"

1 c all purpose flour

8 tbsp cold salted butter (1 stick)

Up to 2 tsp sugar (optional)  

Fruit Filling

1 lb firm-ripe apricots
1/3 c sugar
2 or 3 pinches of salt

First, prepare the dough as you will want to freeze it before using it. On a cool work surface or wide bowl, mix flour and sugar.

Cut the stick of butter lengthwise into about 1/4 in slices. Coat each slice with flour on both sides and squish each piece with your fingers til the slices become little shards. Now fold the sheets and shards of butter into the flour, squishing them together and breaking them into shards repeatedly. Do this until you have about 2/3 crumbs and 1/3 flakes of butter in your mixture.

Now trickle 1 tbsp of ice water evenly over this clump of strangely textured dough. Stir it all together and work it with your fingertips. Here is where you should see the "moist sawdust begin to look like humid Grape-Nuts". Mass the dough and knead it a bit. At this point, add a few more drops of water if your dough feels really dry- it will prob be sticky, so flour up those fingers. Now, on a lightly floured surface, knead this all into a smooth ball. Put the ball between sheets of plastic wrap and press into a disk about 1 in thick and smooth the surface with a rolling pin. Wrap up that dough and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes to let the Gluten relax. The Gluten had a hard day at the office, so it really needs some quiet fridge time, preferably with a Scotch.

When the Gluten is done being a lazy SOB, roll it out and place it into a 9 1/2 in tart shell pan. Wrap with plastic wrap and freeze before filling and baking. You can do this a day or two ahead of time, but make sure its wrapped well, to prevent freezer burn. You don't want a tart crust that tastes like frozen Brussels sprouts (or DO you...?!).

OK NOW! Time for the fruit.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Cut your 'cots in half, remove the pits and quarter them. Toss them with sugar and salt to taste, in a large bowl. You will want this much sugar, since cooking will bring out the acidity and tannins in the skins of the apricots. Place the fruit in neat circles in the crust, skin side down. The fruits are friends, so they should touch but don't stack or crowd them. Haven't you ever heard of PERSONAL SPACE?! Scrape the sugar sludge from the bowl over the tart. 

Bake tart until crust is golden brown and the fruit is soft and has begun to caramelize. This is usually about 50 min, but it took a bit longer for me. If at any point the crust looks burny but the fruit needs more time, quickly take the tart out and protect the crust with strips of aluminum foil. Just tear some off and gently press it over the rim, without breaking any of it.

While the description may be a bit long, this is a SUPER EASY TART!!! It really only has a handful or so of ingredients. I enjoyed it for dessert and then AGAIN for breakfast! It did not last long in my home, sadly.

Enjoy!

Summer Fruit Fantasia

Summer fruit, you're making me CRAZY! For the past few weeks I've been on a fruit binge. I'm not proud of it, but I try to be honest with you, my loyal readers. I've been gorging on cherries, strawberries, blueberries, plums, apricots and more... It's just all that luscious juicy fruit in season right now... glistening, jewel-like in the produce aisles, beckoning to me with sweet, sun-ripened deliciousness...

Ahem. Anyway, oddly I only finding myself really wanting to bake during the summertime, as baked goods incorporating fruit are my absolute favorite hot weather treats. Another summertime treat is going to the library. Yep, the library. I loooove wandering about in the library for hours, poking through random shelves and accumulating a pile that I know will never be returned in three weeks. This is how I happened upon the Zuni Cafe Cookbook. In the world of food blogging, the Zuni Cafe Cookbook is highly revered. I've come across soooo many delicious recipes that are punctuated with rants and borderline worship of this cookbook. So when I happened upon it in a search for another Alice Waters tome, I went for it.

The book is very nice, I must say, and there is a wide assortment of dishes that are both tempting and doable. My first foray was Polenta with Fresh Corn, which was delicious the first night; the next night I fried it with olive oil, rosemary and sage...SO GOOD. My second Zuni Cafe foray was a dessert. A very, very delicious dessert that was not very much trouble to make at all. Let me tell you about it.

Shortcake with Summer Fruit  (from the Zuni Cafe Cookbook by Judy Rodgers)

 Serves 6

There are two preparations for this dish: fruit and shortcakes (and whipped cream).

First, prepare the fruit so that it can lurk, macerate and become the juicy soup that you desire.

Fruit Topping
Ingredients:
3/4 cup light dry white wine, chilled (I used dry riesling)
6 tablespoons sugar (or more if you like things sweeeet)
4 small or 2 large ripe peaches or nectarines (I used two medium peaches)
3 cups mixed ripe berries (I used strawberries, but blackberries, blueberries, raspberries or mulberries would all be delicious...the author suggests olallieberries, loganberries, boysenberries or tayberries... WHAT ARE THOSE?!!?!)

Stir together the wine and sugar in a wide bowl. It should be wide so that all the fruities can bathe equally in this wine/sugar bath. Add more sugar if your sweet tooth is actin' up.

Now here things get interesting. Judy would have you layer the fruit in a specific sequence, going peaches then nectarines then strawbs, then all other berries. There is no explanation for this, but I naturally did not read the instructions thoroughly and threw the strawbs in first, then the peaches. Nothing seemed to go wrong, so do what you want. Just make sure that when you stir them together you do not bruise or break apart the fruit. Be gentle!!!

Tip for peeling peaches: This is pure genius. Judy says to lower the peaches into simmering water, removing after 10 to 15 seconds when the skin has loosened. Slide into cold water and cool, easily peeling off the skin. Amazing!

Tips for chopping strawberries:
Get a SLAP CHOP!!! My boyfriend gave me one for my birthday (along with some other delightful things including dinner at a Spanish restaurant and a Basque cooking class for two!!!) as a joke based on this video, but the hilarious part is...this gadget works! I slapped those strawberries into bits in no time...and cleanup was a snap!

Ok, once the excitement of slap chopping is over...cut peeled peaches in wedges and add them to the bowl. If you don't have a SC, hull and coarsley slice strawberries and add to the bowl.

Remember to gently swirl the fruit into the wine. Cover loosely and leave to macerate for an hour or more at room temp, gently turning the fruit after about 30 min. Use a rubber spatula.  Add more wine or sugar to sweeten or de-sweeten.

Ok, so now that you've gotten your fruit drunk on white wine, it's time to really get your hands dirrrty on some shortcakes.

Bakin' Up the Shortcakes

Ingredients for six biscuits:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons salted butter, cut into 1/4 inch slabs and chilled
1 cup plus up to 1 tablespoon cold heavy cream
water to brush the tops

Whipped Cream:
1 to 1 1/4 cold heavy cream
sugar to taste

While your fruit is macerating (hahaaaaa), preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Cut and smash the cold butter into the four mixture, until the butter is reduced to flakes the size of cornflakes. This cornflakes size comparison comes from Judy herself, but I never saw cornflakes, but it was clear to me when the butter was smashed enough and the dough became coarse.

Pour in 1 cup of the cream, distributing over all of the flour. Work it in quickly. It will be kind of funky and sticky- if there are really dry spots pour on a bit more cream to bind the flour, but don't worry if it is ragged in some places. It IS biscuit dough after all.

Flour a cool surface (such as a marble countertop) and gently flatten your dough into a roughly rectangular form. Dust it and use your fancy french rolling pin that your mother gave you to roll the dough 1 inch thick. If it's sticking to surfaces, add more flour. Use a sharp(!) knife to cute the dough into six squares. Brush the tops lightly with water.

Place on baking sheet at least 2 inches apart so the biscuits don't steam each other as they bake. Bake until golden brown, about 20-25 min. It's important not to let them underbake or they will become heavyyyy. Cool on a wire rack.

NOW, whip the cream and whip it good. You could do this with a mixer, or by hand with a whisk if you're feeling old school. Add sugar to taste.

Split the biscuit and top the bottom with tasty fruit and wine syrup. Add a healthy dollop of your whipped cream and perch the browned top part on top.

Consume with the fury of a thousand suns. 

Enjoy!