All content copyright Katrina Hall 2008 through 2025

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

toasted walnut biscuits with fig jam






One day I found an interesting email from King Arthur flour in my inbox: Whole Wheat-Walnut biscuits with Grape Seed Flour. I printed it out, intrigued - never mind that whole wheat flour and I don't really get along, and I didn't have any grape seed flour, and with the unpredictable Spring weather ( sleet, snow, ice, sliding, crashing cars) I wasn't driving 25 miles for it. But I DID have the most beautiful fig jam, a birthday present from my blessed daughter.
This morning the walnuts tumbled out of the freezer shelf onto the floor, and I took that as an omen I should fiddle around with this recipe, so here it is.
Makes about 15 biscuits, using a 2 1/2" round cutter
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2 1/4 cups King Arthur all purpose flour
1/2 cup wheat germ, toasted in the toaster oven
1 1/4 cups chopped walnut pieces, toasted in a toaster oven
2 1/2 t. baking powder
1 t. kosher salt
1 stick ( 1/2 cup) cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 cup buttermilk
1 large egg
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Preheat oven to 400F ( my oven runs hot, so I set it a little lower than the 425F they called for)
Lightly grease a baking sheet.
Place the flour, baking powder, salt, and toasted wheat germ in mixer bowl.
Grab a handful of the walnut pieces and set aside, then pulse the walnuts in a food processor until fairly fine. Add it to the flour mixture in the mixer bowl.
Add the butter pieces to the flour and mix until incorporated.
Whisk the egg and buttermilk together and add to the flour/walnuts, then mix quickly until the dough forms a loose ball.
Gently turn out onto a floured counter, and roll out to one inch thick.
Cut into biscuits, very gently molding the leftover scraps into one or two "extra" biscuits.
Brush with a little milk and sprinkle the set aside walnut pieces on top of the biscuits.
Bake for 16 minutes, or until toasty brown on top .
I think these would be much heavier if you use the whole wheat flour and the grape seed flour - but these biscuits came out very light and tender.
Serve warm with fig jam and enjoy! These would also be wonderful with a nice soft cheese like brie - a nice change from plain old crackers.

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What I'm reading:
The Widower's Tale by Julia Glass, which I LOVED

4 comments:

The Food Hound said...

Not the largest fan of fig jam, but I'm a fan of any other jam, esp with these biscuits! They look fab!

katrina said...

Thanks, Food Hound! These also worked beautifully with the Vermont brie I had, and it was a nice change from crackers -

Barb said...

Your biscuits look wonderful.

Can you even imagine how many grape seeds it must take to make a cup of grape seed flour??? Maybe I'm confused about that ..... Actually, I've never heard of that. guess I'll have to take a look at the KAF site and see what it says!

katrina said...

Hey, Barb! I'm guessing if you made these biscuits with walnuts and brie or fig jam, and had a glass of red wine, that would kind of level it out:)