Measuring Moments + Sweet Cream Biscuit Recipe

I've started and stopped this post 76 times in the last 4 weeks. I wanted to share where I was, why I was away, and that I would be back, but concise words never came to me. I just couldn't find the best way say - I've just been measuring moments.

Friday was my last day at my full time job of over 7 years. The first job I had as a culinary school graduate. The job where I started as an intern and left as a recipe developer, project manager, food stylist, and food media specialist. I started as a single 20-something and am leaving as a wife and mother on the brink of her thirties. The end of my full time job has been hard - it's made me introverted and reflective. Seven years is a lot of moments - and in preparing all my files I relived them all over again. I wanted to give my job all of me for the last month. So I stepped away from the blog for a bit. I still feel timid about coming back here - I'm just starting a new routine, trying to figure out my roles as a freelance professional and work-at-home mom.

The other exciting news is that I'm pregnant with baby #2! We're expecting him/her in early November.  We will not be finding out the sex of this baby (per my husband's request!). If you've been reading since before I had Ella, you might remember that I was pretty much sick my entire pregnancy. The first trimester of this pregnancy was also really rough - I could barely stand to think about food. But I've been feeling much much better the last two weeks, so my money is on this little biscuit being a baby boy.

Ella's growing like a weed - devouring books, telling us wild stories, and trying to learn how to use the potty (mostly for the temporary tattoos). We took a day trip to Chattanooga. We went to visit all of the MawMaws (and my Nana) for Mother's Day. We got a new HVAC system. I started doing some really fun food styling with my photographer friend Jeff Roffman. May was mostly a really great month and with so many big life changes happening at once I wanted to put down my phone, turn off my computer, and experience it all with my eyes wide open.

I'll be back in this space more regularly and updating my portfolio site with new client work and collaborations every month. It feels good to be back. Thank you so much for your patience.

Sweet Cream Biscuits
makes about 18 (1 1/2 inch) biscuits

Ella and I made these for our Mother's Day picnic and served them with roasted strawberries and lightly sweetened whipped cream. We also had them toasted with butter and jam the next day.

3 cups whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/3 to 1 1/2 cups heavy cream plus more for topping
coarse sanding or turbinado sugar for topping

Heat the oven to 425 degrees F.  Line a half sheet pan with parchment paper and set aside.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar in a large bowl. Add the vanilla extract and 1 cup of cream to the dry ingredients, stirring as you pour in the cream. Stir to combine.  Add 2 more tablespoons of cream as necessary to create a moist, but not sticky dough.

Dump the dough onto a lightly floured work surface.  Gently press the disk out into a 3/4″-thickness.

Use a small biscuit cutter to cut small circles from the dough. Place the biscuits close together on the prepared sheet pan.  Brush each biscuit with heavy cream and sprinkle generously with sanding sugar.

Bake for 12 to 14 minutes or until golden brown and cooked through.


Remove from the oven and serve warm.

{Feeding Baby}: Firsts

Let's keep things real around here. Ella's first "real food" {as in non-formula} was not a puree of the lovely organic carrots you see above. Her very first was brown rice cereal, followed by oat cereal, and then very ripe bananas. So, you know, nothing worth snapping a picture of. 

{Thirsty Thursday} Happy Happy Hour

Have you seen the wonderful dates that Ashley at Not Without Salt makes with her husband? I love this idea. Sometimes I get bummed because between the hubs and I both working full time, plus our own passion projects, and trying to see friends and family we don't often get one-on-one time. It is a blessing to have a full life! And I know I often take for granted being married to someone who works so hard. 

Donut Bundt Cake with Chocolate Glaze

Let's agree on two things: if it is not fried dough, call it a donut, not a doughnut and this motherhood thing is not for the faint of heart. The first, I just made up and the latter I am slowly learning.

I'm typing frantically, hoping that Ella sleeps twenty more minutes so I can finish this post and clean the toilets. You probably shouldn't mention toilets on a food blog. Also, you probably shouldn't talk about poopy diapers while you're at lunch with a bunch of lovely ladies, but its kinda par for the course today. All of this to say, that this time in my life is full of emotions. Emotions and complete craziness.

Some days I wish Ella would just learning how to walk/talk/use the toilet already. And then, in the same day, I will cry because she's almost getting too long to lay in my lap anymore and the elephant pajamas with the ruffles on the butt don't fit. I feel guilt for leaving her to work, obligated to work so I can give her everything. And in twelve years she will absolutely hate me, and five or so after that she'll leave completely.

My mom came to visit recently, and I am reminded and glad for the way our relationship has grown. It got me thinking a lot about the lineage of mother's before me. In fits of daydreaming and tired-mind wandering, I remember my mom's mother. Her house cast a sepia tone on everything in the summers I spent there. She kept a small garden and her cellar was lined with canned beans and carrots. Two freezers below the house kept blueberries we picked, popsicles, cool-whip, and bags of her cake donuts.

I wasn't one of those cooks who was taught at my grandmother's hip. I begrudgedly picked snap peas and peeled the toothy thread from the back steps of her little house on the corner. She always always took me blueberry picking under the guise that it was something I loved. I do now, but I was easily bored with it as a kid. Now I wish I had paid more attention to her in the kitchen. She made the very best cake donuts. My father loved them so much that she continued to make them for him long after my parents divorced. She made them every time I came to visit until her arthritis bothered her too much and then she'd ask a friend to make them for me. I never learned to make them from her before she passed.

On a trip home last fall I got to look through her recipes and found two notes regarding the infamous donuts. Neither is quite right, I'm sure something is missing. Now I'm sure the secret ingredient was her well word hands and heart. She too knew motherhood is not for the weak.

Donut Bundt Cake with Chocolate Glaze

serves 10-12

Inspired by my grandmother's cake donuts that were flavored with cinnamon and nutmeg and deep fat fried, this cake requires a few extra steps than most cakes; I promise its worth it.

1 cup unsalted butter at room temperature, plus 2 tablespoons for the pan
2 cups sugar, plus 2 tablespoons for the pan
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
4 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extra
1 cup whole milk

For the glaze:
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/4 cup half and half
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate, chopped
2 cups powdered sugar
1 tablespoon milk
Sprinkles, optional but highly highly recommended

Heat the oven to 350˚F and rub a large bundt pan with two tablespoons butter. Make sure to cover the pan well to prevent sticking later. Next coat the pan with 2 tablespoons of sugar: it easiest to do this by dumping the sugar into the pan, covering the pan with plastic wrap and shaking the whole pan until it well coated, remove the plastic wrap and tap out any excess sugar.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon in a medium bowl.

Cream together the butter and sugar in a stand mixer on medium-high, until lighted, 3-4 minutes. Reduce the speed to medium and add the eggs one at a time, making sure each is incorporated before adding the next. Stir in the vanilla.

Add one third of the flour mixture and stir in at medium speed. Stop scrap down the work bowl and add half of the milk. Repeat, ending with the last third of the flour mixture.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake 45 minutes to an hour, until the cake is set and a toothpick comes out clean. Cool 15 minutes in the pan, then remove and cool completely before glazing.

For the glaze: Combine the butter, milk, and vanilla in a small saucepan and bring just to a simmer over medium heat. Remove from the heat and toss in the chocolate. Leave the chocolate alone for 2 minutes and then whisk until smooth. Add the powdered sugar and whisk, whisk, whisk until smooth. Pour over the cooled cake, sprinkle on your sprinkles and set for 30 minutes before slicing.

I suggest serving this cake with hot coffee and some good belly laughs.

More Donut Cravings? Check out:
Emma's Donut Cake
Luisa's Donut Cake 
Deb's Cinnamon Brown Butter Breakfast Puffs

{Feeding Baby}: FEED NEEDS & GIVEAWAY

{This is not the beginning of S&S turning into a baby blog or even a baby food blog; But in the interest of sharing everything I know/am always learning about food, I want to document my experiences in feeding Ella during her first year.}

A Sweet Pop

Life has a wicked sense of humor.

When we try to make plans, life makes others. Just as we think we've figured out the new plan, life throws another curveball our way. This is both the brightly beautiful and the deeply troubling thing about life.