My hair is in rollers.  Like… kickin’ it old school in Velcro rollers.

No one needs to know that besides the 137 of you who read this  blog, my cat, and any random person who comes to this blog after Google searching “the most awesome biscuits ever made, for real”.

Ah.. the rollers.  It’s amazing how un-cute you have to look to eventually look cute-ish.  Boys don’t do this.  They just put on cardigans and look hot.

Now… there’s a lot of good news I need to tell you about these biscuits.  First:  bacon.  Second:  brown sugar.  Third:  butter.  Fourth:  they’re freaking biscuits!!!  And fifth:  they do not have an un-cute phase.  They’re all cute/delicious/freak-out-worthy, from beginning to end.

Do you really need convincing?  No.  Do I really need these rollers?  Um… today?  Yes.

I love when baked goods start with salty bacon and brown sugar.

It’s really a good path.

Cold butter is the key to big, fluffy biscuits.

It gets incorporated into the dough with fast fingers.

Sweet and salty bacon is paired with very coarsely crushed black pepper.

Every day needs a bite of spice!

Just mix biscuits with a fork… no biggie.

Try not to sneak all of the bacon bits out of the dough and into your mouth.

I could just stare at this picture all day.  It’s like being in love.

These biscuits… besides being completely delicious… are smack dab in the middle of sweet and savory.

You could top them with butter and jam, and feel just right.  Or!  You could add a fried egg and tomato jam and have a perfectly tasty morning.

It’s up to you.  Choose your own bacon biscuit adventure!

Brown Sugar Bacon Biscuits

makes about 8 biscuits

For the Bacon:

6 slices of bacon

1 tablespoon brown sugar

coarse ground black pepper

For the Biscuits:

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

3 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 to 1 teaspoon coarse ground black pepper

3/4 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes

1 large egg

3/4 cup buttermilk

Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat oven to 375 degrees F.  Line a baking sheet with foil or parchment paper and spread bacon across baking sheet in a single layer.  Sprinkle with brown sugar and black pepper.  Bake until crisp and cooked through, about 13 to 15 minutes.  Remove from the oven and carefully use tongs to place the hot bacon on a cutting board.  Don’t put the bacon on paper towels or they might stick.  Ick!  Allow to cool until you’re able to handle the slices and chop into medium chunks.  Set aside.

Increase oven temperature to 425 degrees F.  Line another baking sheet with parchment paper or foil, and set aside.

In a mixing bowl, sift together flour, sugars, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and black pepper.  Add cold butter and use your hands to quickly break the butter into the flour until mixture resembles coarse meal.  In another bowl, combine egg and buttermilk and beat lightly with a fork.  Add to flour mixture all at once, stirring to incorporate.  Once batter is nearly incorporated, add bacon and mix in.

You may want to dump the shaggy biscuit mixture onto a lightly floured board to knead together a few times.  Don’t overwork the dough and melt the butter, Just make sure it comes together.

Roll or pat dough into a 1-inch thickness.  Cut into 2-inch rounds using a biscuit cutter or cut into 2×2-inch squares.  Reshape and roll dough to create more biscuits with excess scraps.    Place on an ungreased baking sheet and bake at 425 degrees F for 12-15 minutes.  Serve biscuits warm with jam or a fried egg.

I love these biscuits the day they are made.  They can be kept in the fridge and will last for two days.  The shaped, uncooked biscuit can also be frozen.  Thaw in the fridge overnight and bake up in the morning.

I know what you’re craving.  I know what you’ve got on your mind.  I know juuuuust the thing you need.

Cold.  Green.  Soup.

Sexy right?  Just the thing you’ve been yearning for?  The answer to all of your burning questions?  The great treasure?

Wait…. no!?

Cold green soup isn’t your thing?  Come on…. let me at least try to change your mind.

This soup starts with creamy, ripe, delicious avocados.  We’re off to a wonderful start!  It’s the start of amazing things like guacamole.  But wait… stop thinking about guacamole.  We’re not making that.

Psssst!  Sneak up top and check out the podcast page for the latest Joy the Baker Podcast!

Look how pretty food is!

This is going into the creamy, cold, green goodness.

Sweet corn is worth freaking out over.

Sweet corn with lime and cooked onions is worth triple freaking out over.

We’re going to cook up all of these pretties and spoon a generous portion into the center of the creamy, cold, green goodness soup.

These corn, spice, and bacon mixture will add just the kick and crunch the soup needs.  Lime?  Zesty.  Parsley?  Bright.

The recipe is adapted from this month’s Bon Appetit magazine.

They also have a clever corn-cutting trick.  I didn’t use their clever corn-cutting trick.  I prefer to have my corn fly all over my counter and floor as I cut it.

Also… please look at the cover on Bon Appetit.  It’s pietown central in this month’s issue.

How is it that I decided to make cold, green soup?  I dunno.  I don’t.  I have issues.

The soup is as smooth as can be.  Avocado blends beautifully and creates a pure velvet soup.  It’s flavored delicately with only lime and salt, so the avocado flavor really shines through.  A generous amount of sweet corn and salty bacon  hash give each bite of this soup a kick of flavor and a touch of crunch.  The soup and hash are a match made in heaven.

Creamy, bright, salty, rich and delicious.  I wasn’t sure I would love this soup… I’ll be honest… then I finished two bowls.  It’s different, and sometimes different is delicious!

Dear Future Husband,

I got your email yesterday… the one with the subject line “To My Future Wife”.

Um….. can I be honest?  That was sweet… but a little creeptown.

I know… I know… you’re probably going to say it was all a joke and you were just kidding and blah blah blah.

Listen.  You may get the impression from this blog that it’s all sunshine and lollipops here at my end of the world.

Here’s some things you should know:

Sometimes I run out of toothpaste and forget to buy more.  Irresponsible.  I’m sorry.

I only have 168 Facebook friends.  That’s not a lot.

I adopt stray cats… even the ones with dirty, matted fur.  And I love them.  And I talk to them in my cat voice.

I have a voice I use specifically for cats.

I put my feet on the coffee table.  I’m demanding and unreasonable when I get stressed out.  I text too much.   I don’t want a pet bird.  I don’t want to pretend that I like your mother’s pet bird.  Oh.. and I’ll lose my everloving mind if you get pee on the floor and don’t clean it up.  I will.

So… yea.  I understand if you want to retract that email now.  If you don’t, you’re nutso.

I made breakfast polenta this morning.  Since I couldn’t decide if I wanted it sweet of savory, I made it both ways.

Then I ate both bowls.

Then I realized that I wanted savory breakfast polenta… but the sweet polenta was a lovely warm up.

Polenta… if you don’t know… is ground cornmeal.  When boiled with water, milk and butter, cornmeal cooks up into a creamy, warm, super comforting bowl of good.

Things that I’m really good at:

cooking bacon, eating popcorn, writing on graph paper, text messaging, and typing simple equations into my calculator.

Things that I really suck at:

math.

I already have a serious problem with kettle corn.

A few months back I ate only kettle corn for a week straight.

You think I’m kidding.  I’m not.

Now I’ve gone and cooked the kettle corn in bacon fat and added crisp bacon bits and maple syrup.

This can’t end well.

It will surely end with one sticky computer.

Oh well.?

Have you ever treated yourself to an expensive tomato?

Have you ever treated yourself to a single heirloom tomato?  In season.  Ripe.  Striped with color.  Fleshy.  Juicy.  Sweet.  (I sorta sounds like I’m talking about butts… my apologies).

In any case… have you ever paid nearly $4 for a single tomato?

I have.

When really good tomatoes are thaaaat expensive, you choose carefully.  You don’t care if you’re blocking the skinny yoga girl who is fluttering about behind you trying to get at the same tomato display.  Excuse me, skinny yoga girl…. I’m going to take my time with this one.  You should go eat a steak anyway.

What do you do with your ‘spensive tomato once you’ve requested that it be packed in it’s own separate bag, once you’ve placed it in the empty passager seat next to you, once you’ve coddled it all the way home?

You put bacon on it.  It is the only option.

Ok… so we’re going to put more than just bacon onto a tomato.

We’re making BLT sandwiches, with the best ingredients we can get out hands on.  Because we’re (totes) worth it.

First.  Good bread.  Mine is from La Brea Bakery.  Gimme.  It’s good.

Organic Red Leaf Butter Lettuce.

That’s a lot of words for lettuce.  See?  Fancy.

Mayonnaise.

It’s not that fancy.

It’s just mayonnaise.

Nice, thick sliced, smoked bacon.  Extra slices.  Extra crisp.

Combine all ingredients in between bread slices.

Marvel at the beauty of your expensive tomato, fancy lettuce, crispy bacon… and the bread that you toasted in the residual bacon fat….

and then shove the entire thing into your mouth.  Slowly.

Epic.

ps.  if you have your own heirloom tomato plant, i salute you and your fancypants.

>

Please.  Take a few moments to dig through your kitchen cabinets to find your waffle maker.  Please do this.  I’ll wait.

….. There?  Find it?

Now.  Please.  These waffles need to be made now, tonight, first thing tomorrow morning, or whenever you get hungry… now?  They’re that good.

I need to go wash my hair.  That’s not a euphemism for anything.  I really need to wash my hair.  By the time I come back, I hope you’ve preheated that old waffle machine.

You know that team building exercise you might play at sleep-away camp that requires you to fall backwards into the waiting arms of a fellow camper?  The Trust Fall?  The basic idea is that you completely let yourself fall backwards, trusting that the person behind you has arms outstretched to catch you before you hit the ground.  It’s a very literal way of saying “Hey!  I’ve got your back!”  or “Don’t worry, I’ll catch you if you fall.”  If the person you’ve entrusted to catch you is not paying attention and flirting with her sleep-away boyfriend as you fall… well, you might have trust issues for life.  Not cool.

I bring up the old Trust Fall because we’re talking about sandwiches.  Sandwiches are serious business.  I feel like I need to do a good round of Trust Falling with someone before we’re allowed to make each other sandwiches.  Like I said… sandwiches are serious.

I need to know that someone has got my back when they make me a sandwich.  Who’s making me a sandwich?  No one… that’s not the point.  It’s all about trust, and care and attention.  Like… which slices of bread they choose from the loaf, and how the mayonnaise doesn’t sneak over the edges, and how the tomato slices are just thin enough, and the lettuce is mostly dry from the washing.  Sandwiches have a lot of details.  There’s a lot going on.  I need to trust that my sandwich maker can handle these details… you know?

What?  Too much?  It’s just a sandwich?  Yea… a sandwich.  I take my sandwiches to heart.  I haven’t done the old Trust Fall with the young gentlemen at my local sandwich shop, so frankly, I don’t know if I can trust them to make me a sandwich… ridiculous, but true.

So, yes.  I’m a touch neurotic about my sandwiches.  That’s just how it goes.  Because I’m so ridiculous, I usually make my own.

This time around I made my own mayonnaise, because, holy heck it’s easy!  Mayonnaise is a simple emulsion of egg yolk, flavors like mustard and seasoning, acid, and a fat like canola oil or olive oil.   Olive oil will make a strongly flavored mayonnaise.  I went for a roasted red pepper (I bought a jar) version using grapeseed oil as the fat.  This version creates a slightly looser mayonnaise than the one you might scoop from the store bought jars.  For a plain mayonnaise you can make with a bowl and a whisk, check out this tutorial.  It’s handy.