Time to Bake! Blue Cheese Biscuits and Citrus and Herb Shortbread Cookies

I used to be a now and again baker. The past two years I have become the gal that bakes almost every weekend. I enjoy finding new ways to make old favorites and putting my own personal twist on them. But I am not a great lover of sweets, I’d prefer breads and biscuits to cookies and cakes. But I do like the occasional short bread cookie. I am sharing two recipes I found and put my own twist on them.

Blue Cheese Biscuits
2 C flour
3 Tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
8 oz sour cream
½ C butter melted
4 oz Crumbled blue cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and lightly grease a baking sheet, set aside.
In a mixing bowl combine all the dry ingredients until well blended. Add in butter and sour cream then blue cheese. Mix until combined. The batter shouldn’t be too dry but not too moist. if it is add a little more melted butter.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and roll out to ¾ inches in thickness. You can use a 2 inch round cookie cutter to shape biscuits but I prefer to cut them into squares. Place them on the baking sheet and bake 15 minutes or until lightly golden brown.

That is the basic recipe but you can change it up!
You can add bacon bits to the blue cheese recipe for a Bacon and Blue biscuit. OR you can Greek it up by swapping out the blue cheese for feta cheese and adding some chopped sun dried tomatoes. You will want to add 1 to 2 Tbsp. Olive oil if you do this to make up for the drier cheese and tomatoes.

These biscuits are perfect for soups! The blue cheese biscuit pairs well with tomato or bacon jams.

Vegan Shortbread – Rosemary, lemon and olive oil
3 cups white whole wheat flour
1¼ cups powdered sugar
1 tsp. fine grain sea salt
1 tbsp. chopped fresh rosemary
2 lemons, zested
1 cup extra virgin olive oil

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a medium-sized mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, salt, rosemary and lemon zest. Pour in the olive oil and stir until all of the dry mixture is incorporated.
3. Transfer the dough to a greased 8 by 8-inch pan.
4. Use your fingers to squish the dough into an even layer. Prick the surface of the dough all over with a fork (a diagonal pattern looks nice).
5. Bake until the surface feels firm to the touch and is lightly golden around the edges 50 minutes. Remove from oven and let the pan cool for 20 minutes. Then, using a very sharp knife, slice the shortbread into 8 even columns and 4 even rows (cookies will be roughly 1 inch wide by 2½ inches long).
7. Let the cookies cool before using a small spatula to remove them from the pan, or serve them directly from the pan.

The bolded ingredients can be substituted for the following variation:

Basil Orange Shortbread 2 tbsp chopped basil2 oranges zested 1 cup Sunflower oil

Cilantro Lime 3 tbsp chopped cilantro 2 limes zested 1 cup vegetable oil

Cranberry Orange Shortbread 1 cup dried cranberries 2 oranges zested 1 cup Sunflower oil