Tag: buttermilk

Perfect Oatmeal Cookies: The Ultimate Family Recipe

Posted on by M.

In my family, perfect oatmeal cookies are the ultimate.

Humble as they may be, the texture and flavor of oatmeal cookies are hard to beat! We’ve had a recipe in the family for decades that used to produce such a delicacy, but when we moved back to the States after many years baking them abroad, something shifted and the finished product was not as we remembered it.

For at least ten years now, I’ve gone back and forth. Sometimes I would almost convince myself that my memories were just super nostalgic and not realistic. At other moments I’d double down and tweak the recipe over and over.

I just needed to understand the science.

I’ve scoured the internet for variations to compare, searched for the original recipe that ours was based on, learned more about the idiosyncrasies of baking soda and baking powder and the texture difference of using butter or shortening over oil and more. 

I could write about these cookies for longer than you’d care to read; in fact, I’ve probably almost lost most of you already.

This recipe was a holy grail.

Then it wasn’t and now, I believe I have once again restored it.

We’re all welcome.

The key to this recipe is really all about your choices.

Which fats you use and how long you cream them with the sugar in the first step can make or break this recipe.

You will also notice that we use baking soda together with buttermilk, because baking powder in an oatmeal cookie, aside from being sacrilege in my mind, produces a ‘puffy’ result. I do not like soft or puffy oatmeal cookies. Cake-like textures belong in cake, in my opinion.

Farm Style Oatmeal Cookies

Farm Style Oatmeal Cookies

Yield: 24
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 12 minutes
Total Time: 22 minutes

Ingredients

  • 1 1/2 c. + 2 T. brown sugar
  • 3/4 c. oil
  • 1/4 c. shortening
  • 1/2 c. buttermilk (or sour milk)
  • 1 t. vanilla
  • 4 c. oatmeal
  • 1 3/4 c. flour
  • 1 t. soda
  • 3/4 t. salt
  • 1/4 c. chocolate chips (optional)
  • 1/4 c. raisins (optional)

Instructions

  1. Cream sugar, oil and shortening together on medium speed until light and fluffy. This is a key point! It might not seem like you need to cream it much because of the oil, but run the mixer at least 2-3 minutes. Trust me.
  2. Add buttermilk and vanilla and mix well.
  3. Mix in soda and salt, combining well.
  4. Add oatmeal and mix in.
  5. Finally, mix in the flour. You may want to sift your flour if it is very lumpy, otherwise it should be fine to dump it straight in.
  6. If you want to add raisins or chocolate chips, mix them in now.
  7. Preheat oven to 375*.
  8. Form 1 inch balls and place on ungreased baking sheet. I confess, I line mine with parchment to keep the pan clean, though.
  9. Dip the bottom of a glass in water and flatten each cookie. Smash it once really well in the middle to flatten it, then dip the glass again and round the edges to flatten them as well.
  10. These cookies won't spread past the flattened edge, so feel free to fill the tray. I usually put about 8 per sheet.
  11. Bake until golden brown and crisp. The longer you bake them, the longer they'll last, but the crunchier they will be...
  12. Transfer cookies to cooling rack and cool completely.
  13. Store in an airtight container up to a week.
© A Kitchen of Herbs
Category: Dessert

The Amazing Power of Buttermilk: You’ll Never Go Back

Posted on by M.

There is something about the amazing power of buttermilk that is life-changing. When I say buttermilk, I mean the real thing.

For the sake of those of you who just need the recipe, here it is. No need to scroll or jump to it. If you’d like to keep reading my buttermilk thesis, it’s below the recipe. 😉

Let’s just say, if you have buttermilk or happen to have a dairy cow and just made your own fresh batch…you should try using it in this recipe. Trust me.

I don’t know about you, but I always turn everything into a completely whole wheat version sooner or later. I have found with this recipe that it is key for the structure that you substitute no more than half of the flour for whole wheat.  It requires the gluten concentration of regular flour for at least half the amount to ensure they don’t come out deflated.

buttermilk waffles with strawberries, butter and syrup

Wholesome Buttermilk Waffles

Ingredients

  • 1 t. Baking Soda
  • 2 t. Baking Powder
  • 11/2 cups All Purpose Flour
  • 1/2 cup Whole Wheat Flour
  • 1/4 t. Salt
  • 1/2 cup Sugar
  • 2 cups Buttermilk
  • 2 Eggs
  • 2 t. Vanilla Extract
  • 1/2 cup Butter (Melted)
  • 1 Lemon (Zested)

Instructions

  1. In a small bowl, combine all liquid ingredients, including the melted butter and zest.
  2. Using a larger bowl, whisk together all dry ingredients.
  3. Add liquids to dry ingredients and whisk to combine well.
  4. Batter will be thick.
  5. Preheat waffle iron.
  6. You can use pan spray or brush butter onto the iron before the first use but I find that a little goes a long way. I skip this step myself and find the waffles have a better outside texture for me.
  7. Pour 1/3 – 1/2 c. batter per waffle section.
  8. Cook until golden brown.

Notes

  • These are delicious as breakfast but I make up a batch and freeze some and refrigerate the rest to be eaten as a snack for my little one.
  • This recipe does very well frozen or fresh and a minute or two in a toaster crisps them up almost like they just came out of the waffle iron!

© A Kitchen of Herbs
Category: Breakfast

The left over milk from making butter is just not comparable to the teaspoon of vinegar I added to regular milk. Neither is Sour Milk the same thing as Buttermilk. Yogurt is not the equivalent of Sour Cream. There’s a reason we don’t use the same names.

cottage cheese on plates and a bowl of sour cream

I grew up using the life hack where you add vinegar to milk to make a buttermilk substitute. It works, sort of. At the end of the day it ends up being exactly that, a substitute. In a pinch, if you have to, it is better than just using regular milk, because you do need that touch of acidity. Most recipes calling for buttermilk are relying on it to interact with a leavening agent. The difference between the substitute and the real deal is the flavor. Vegetable oil will keep your eggs from sticking to the pan, but the more flavorful option is butter.

Just like butter is tastier than oil, buttermilk is just naturally more delicious than soured milk.

Now that you are all rolling your eyes at me for stating the obvious and preaching on the virtues of using actual buttermilk, I will move on to the point of my post.

Buttermilk rules.

I have been making pancakes and waffles for decades and while they have all been delicious enough, I have been either using plain milk or simply made soured milk to substitute for buttermilk because come on, it’s the same thing and it would be fine. Yeah, it would be fine. It was…fine. But it was never more than fine.

One day, I had bought actual buttermilk for my partner to use in something and he insisted it had to be the real thing. I rolled my eyes and brought it home. He used half of it and the rest sat in the fridge for a week while I considered it suspiciously and tried to think what I was going to do with the rest of it unless I just let it go bad. I was busy and forgot about it for 3 weeks. Surely it was spoiled now and I went to dump it down the sink, only to realize it smelled fine.

The thing about higher fat dairy is that it always lasts longer than lower fat products.

white graphing paper with hello may text

Whole milk takes longer to go sour than 1%. Yes, I did the experiment. On average, whole milk lasted 8.6 days longer than its lower fat counterpart. 😉 I’m sure there is science about it and one day I will read those articles. Regardless, I now had perfectly good buttermilk and it demanded to be used, having survived so long and so patiently in the fridge.

I resolved to make some waffles with it, because after all these years, and having tried countless recipes that called for the stuff, I had yet to actually use real buttermilk. The lack of the perfect texture of those experiments had been blamed on many things, including the waffle iron. Sir Waffle Iron, I do beg your pardon. It was not his fault at all. It wasn’t the fact that the quantity of sugar was wrong or that it didn’t have the perfect combination of leavening agents.

It turned out, I just needed to follow the actual recipe. What a concept.

Those waffles were the simplest recipe I’d ever found. I didn’t have to separate any eggs, there were no complicated mixing instructions and I even forgot to grease the waffle iron because the small one had been up all night and I was half insane from lack of sleep.

The best waffles I have ever eaten, hands down.

I even changed that recipe the next time I made it and doubled the sugar, forgot the melted butter and substituted half of the flour for whole wheat flour. I even added half a cup more buttermilk because that was all that I had left I didn’t feel like letting it die in the fridge. They still turned out amazing: crispy on the outside, chewy yet fluffy on the inside. They freeze perfectly and toast up for breakfast just like the world’s most delicious home-made Eggo. I can tell you the one thing I didn’t mess with, though.

Don’t substitute ANYthing for the buttermilk.

Add more if you like. Use less if you please. But whatever you do, don’t change it out for anything else.

I am now absolutely starving for some waffles, but I am out of buttermilk and I’m not wrestling my child back into his carseat again today. I also refuse to use a substitute, so I will just have to wait until tomorrow.