Cooking Hints and Tested Recipes, 1937

Homemade "Bisquick" mix for whole-grain and olive-oil lovers

My Homemade Bisquick®

Mix together:

5 cups whole wheat pastry flour

2-1/4 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp cream of tartar

2 Tbl sugar

Stir in well but lightly

1 cup olive oil

Stir in

1/2 cup wheat germ

1 cup milk powder

Store in refrigerator.

Note that this seems to work best -- resulting in moister and more flavorful dishes -- with older Bisquick recipe books, which I enjoy collecting. Either the formula is closer to the older Bisquick, or the Bisquick cookbooks themselves have more flavorful recipes -- or both! These 2 are by far my favorites:

A cute little Bundt pan!

November 15, 2019
Happy National Bundt Day! I always found Bundt cakes waaaaay too huge for the little sugar etc we eat in this house, but then I discovered this while looking at the fun egg bite tray I talk about at https://favoritefoodthisweek.blogspot.com/2019/11/a-fun-breakfast-egg-treat.html ; it's a cute little Bundt pan! www.kohls.com/product/prd-3369270/Food-Network--Pressure-Cooker-Accessory-7-in--Fluted-Cake-Pan.jsp . (You too have probably also seen the really mini Bundt pans, made all in one bigger pan like cupcakes, but I wanted something that was larger than individual size...)

I'm using mine in an oven, which the package clearly says you can. Just take a normal Bundt cake recipe you like and divide the recipe to fit the size of this pan (pour water into the pan and then into a big measuring cup to find how many cups). You'll also have to adjust the time (down) to bake it.

BTW, it says it's nonstick, which I don't usually adore, but this seems to me to be hard anodized aluminum, which does not have the health concerns of either nonstick nor aluminum. But I could be wrong.

And what recipe will I try first? (Forgive me if my lack of experimentation so far is frustrating, but I wasn't sure how long this pan would be available on the market...) I'm finding that my homemade biscuit mix is making it extremely easy and fun to make as-healthy-as-possible breads and desserts; I use it for recipes like I see at https://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/cranberry-apricot-coffee-cake/50829274-9f7a-4dc1-a636-e4b72a679fee  and https://www.food.com/recipe/blueberry-bundt-cake-380155 . I think I've shared that before on this site, but since the search doesn't work great here, I'll re-post it...

Another happy site!

I've been meaning to start this site, and voila, just did....Enjoy! Um, what does it have to do with kitchens? Answer: Anything you like! You can tuck in meal plans, have food holidays, etc!

https://ofholidayscalendarsandplanners.blogspot.com/

A fun breakfast egg treat!

I had the most relaxing time I've had in oh a year maybe!? when I went to a Kohl's I finally discovered nearby and got for like half price what they call an Egg Bite Tray; from https://www.kohls.com/product/prd-3369230/food-network-pressure-cooker-accessory-silicone-egg-bites-with-lid.jsp :

This shows how it looks inside the electric pressure cooker. I used mine differently than the recipe that comes with it; here's my recipe...

My Egg Bites

Made using Food Network-Kohl's silicone Egg Bite Tray, found in their electric pressure cooker area, and a 6-quart (or larger) Instant Pot. You can adapt this to another electric pressure cooker….and I'm sure other flavors and such ideas will work nicely too!...FYI Kohl's site says the tray is safe to 375 in an oven, so one could also adapt this to an oven, placing it on a rack placed in a pan with water…

I found it marvelous to put these together the night before, everything before actually cooking. If you don't do that, it may need a little more time (maybe 1 minute) to cook if you like me are using frozen vegetables.

There is no need to oil or anything.

Put into each egg cup

         some frozen mixture of onions and sweet peppers

Mix well together in a shallow biggish bowl with a fork

         3 eggs (if yours are not large but medium or smaller, use 4)

         salt and pepper

         about 2 Tbl whole milk

"Spoon" the egg mixture into each egg cup; I found a round ice cream scoop worked great, because it wasn't too huge but would hold the goopy mixture well. I had to do more than one scoop each, though. The manufacturer recommends going no higher than ¾ up the sides at this point.

Top each with

         whole black olive

         mozzarella shreds

If you're putting these together the night before, put on the lid and refrigerate. I also put out my Instant Pot on the counter ready to plug in, with the rack inside the pot, plus a measuring cup for the below water ready. FYI, I found it took about a half hour total for the egg bites to be all ready in the morning; it wasn't too bad, because it takes probably 20 minutes to make my coffee and say toast my bread anyway, so I started the egg bites first and kept going.

Put the Instant Pot's rack on the bottom of the pot. Note if your electric pressure cooker's rack does not have handy handles on the sides to lift out the egg bite tray, you may want to rig up something with foil or string, because it will otherwise be awkward to get out the hot tray…

Pour into the pot (because you're going to be steaming these really, though at pressure)

         1 cup water

Remove the lid if you had it on, and put the egg bite tray on top of the rack.

It works best if you can cover the egg bite tray with something that will hold up in the cooking but protect the eggs from getting watery (though I think it will work anyway, à la poached eggs); I used a shallow small stainless steel cake pan with the flat side against the egg bite tray. Baking parchment may also work, but I didn't try that yet…(Apparently the lid that comes with the egg bite tray is not heat-safe.)

When you're ready to cook, set your Instant Pot to cook at LOW pressure for 6 minutes. (Of course follow the instructions for your own Instant Pot. In mine, I pressed Manual then Pressure Cook and any arrow buttons to make it the right pressure and time.)

Turn off the Instant Pot.

Let the Instant Pot sit for 10 minutes.

Then if necessary release the pressure manually (my pressure was completely down already).

Remove the lid.

Take the egg bite tray out carefully. Set it on a dinner plate as it will be rather wet underneath.

Let it sit 5 minutes.

Then just turn the egg bite tray over onto another dinner plate; they should just slide out!

Enjoy!

For your eating and other pleasure...

I've re-opened my site that features fun stuff for potentially every day,
https://bkofhappydays.blogspot.com/

...though some days are still blank, and it's so old that I'm sure there are outdated links. I very well may not update it. However, I've found that as I'm going through probably the hardest time of my life, because my dear love has passed away, I am being helped by ideas and encouragement that pull me through each difficult day, and I thought Hey, I'm definitely not the only one in this universe with this problem, and maybe someone else will be encouraged.

What I'm doing when I feel like it is taking this idea and making it truly my own, pasting in magazine articles I like etc., which of course are copyright so I'm not doing anything else with them, but you are very welcome to make say a notebook with ideas like this for yourself too.

Take care, everyone. Life is so precious; enjoy it...