St. Patrick’s Day: Green Sugar Cookies & Biscuits

I’ve always loved food coloring. I love how it makes the ho-hum coloring of many foods bloom into vibrant shades of tasty magic.

I remember one St. Patrick’s Day when I was in middle school, and Ma was sick. My friend Shelly and I made a green cake with white icing and a green shamrock (gel-icing art courtesy of Shelly; I can barely draw a stick figure). We were pretty sure it would seem totally appetizing, especially for someone who was sick (uhh…not). Fast forward about 23 years (gah! seriously?!)…

I had an itch for baking cookies, so I decided St. Patrick’s Day (the week before, actually) would be a good time to bake (drum roll, please!) green sugar cookies and biscuits. Yes! First, the sugar cookies…

Bake, Baby, Bake!

Several years ago, my mom gave my sister-in-law and me a copy of Rose’s Christmas Cookies, by Rose Levy Beranbaum. If you haven’t flipped through the pages of this gem, I recommend you take a peek. Rose’s Traditional Rolled Christmas Cookie recipe is our go-to recipe for sugar cookies. They’re delicious! And they’re versatile–you can change flavorings, and you can roll them thin for crispy cookies or thicker for chewy cookies. Winner.

One change I made to the sugar cookie recipe is that I used lemon flavoring rather than lemon zest. Why? I was a lazy baker that day, and had zero motivation to zest a lemon and chop the zest. Seriously. I didn’t measure how much I flavoring I used (helpful, right?), but I probably used about 1.5 teaspoons.

Iced Cookies (I forgot to Remove the plastic wrap. Duh.)

I rolled them fairly thin and used our biscuit cutter to give them a pretty, scalloped-edge shape. While the dough chilled, I made royal icing with meringue powder (thanks, Ma!). Green icing? Yes please. I like using the meringue powder for royal icing, because it has a bit of a longer shelf life.

Oh, cheery green cookies! They were a hit with HotPants, my EKG class, and our neighbors during a ladies’ craft/drink night. The cookies had a wonderful lemon taste that pleasantly surprised everyone who tried them. Victory.

Biscuit-Cuttin' Time

Let’s talk biscuits. I grew up eating the best buttermilk biscuits ever in all the universe. It’s true. My great granny made them (at dark o’clock, most mornings!), as did my granny, Ma (also at dark o’clock), and now me (nowhere near dark o’clock). Biscuits and gravy (bacon gravy!) = one of my favorite comfort foods.

Yum!

On Sunday, I decided to make green biscuits before HotPants woke up. I had no designs on what the rest of breakfast would include, but I knew green biscuits would be involved. Our friends Leslie and Doug called to see if we wanted to meet for brunch, and we invited them here to build lunch around green biscuits. Snort.

We ended up with scrambled eggs, sausage, biscuits/gravy, pan-roasted cherry tomatoes, and a light salad with olive oil/lemon juice/truffle salt dressing.

Doug made a seriously good  Ramos Gin Fizz using the recipe in The Craft of the Cocktail, by Dale DeGroff. I’ve had two other versions of a Ramos Gin Fizz since–at bars known for their awesome, old-school drinks–and Doug’s was the best. Nicely done, Mr. DeGroff.

Excellent Ramos Gin Fizz, Courtesy of Doug

Here’s the buttermilk biscuit recipe we use:

1 stick butter, cut into small cubes

2 cups White Lily self-rising flour

1 cup buttermilk

Set your oven temperature to 400 degrees.

Add the butter and flour in a bowl, and cut the butter into the flour with a fork or pastry tool until the texture is a crumbly mixture. Next, add the buttermilk and mix until it’s combined with the flour/butter mixture.

Lightly flour your work surface, and gently knead the dough until it’s not sticky. Pat the dough to the desired thickness (I love thicker biscuits!), cut the biscuits with a biscuit cutter. If you don’t have a biscuit cutter, a round cookie cutter will work. You can also cut square biscuits if you don’t have a round cutter.

Place the biscuits on an ungreased cookie sheet, with the edges of the biscuits touching. This will help keep them a bit more tender.

Bake the biscuits until the edges are golden and the biscuits bounce back when you press their tops lightly.

Yum! Happy baking!