liquid lunch

It's exam time. Finals. Two down and two to go. Really not looking forward to three hours of calculus on Saturday night.

I need energy here. Lots of it, in a fast, easy to make, and quick to consume form.

And for that, we break out the blender.

No, it's not margarita time yet. Though, wow, I could totally do with a tall frosty glass of slushy booze.

Gah! Exams! Must. Study. Must. Eat.

Berry Berry Smoothie

What you need:

• 1/4 cantaloupe
• 1 mango
• 1 c frozen blueberries
• 1 1/2 c frozen raspberries
• 1 c vanilla yogurt
• 1/2 c pear juice

What you gotta do:

If you've got one of those little single serving blenders, I totally suggest it. You won't have to wash an extra cup.

My berries were picked over the summer by a coworker and frozen on a cookie sheet before bagging. I really think frozen fruit is the way to go with smoothies. It removes all temptation to use ice cubes in them. The smoothie will be perfectly chilled, and not watered down at all. It also won't separate if it sits for a few minutes.

Chopping a mango is something most people need to learn how to do. It's not an intuitive process, and it does take a bit of practice to maximize the mango recovery, but it's fairly simple once you know what to do. 

The pit is wide and flat and runs lengthwise down the middle of the fruit. Stand the mango up and align it so that it's long side is pointing away from you.

Don't slice down the middle of a mango. Ever. Offset the knife by about 3/4 of an inch.

Slice straight down. Do the same to the other side.

You can trim the last little bits off the middle, but what you have here is the bulk of the flesh.

Score it just to the skin, lengthwise and then crosswise.

Then, with your thumbs on the edges and your fingers on the bottom, flip it inside out.

Perfect bite-sized chunks just waiting to be bitten.

Or sliced off and put in a smoothie.

You can do something similar with the canteloupe. My dad always did this when I was a kid; they're called canteloupe caterpillars.

Both the mangos and the canteloupe go into the blender on top of the berries.

You can use any flavour of yogurt that you want in your smoothie, but I had a good quality, high fat (8.5%, which is insanely high for yogurt, but really not bad compared to most dairy products) vanilla. 

Pour in your pear juice. Again, the kind of juice is flexible. More what you need here is some lubricant to keep the mixture moving in the blender. Yes, vodka would work just fine.

This starts looking smooth so fast I barely had time for a picture. I did have to poke at it once to get everyone moving around (I'm not going to warn you to turn the blender off before you stick a spoon in it. If you can't figure out not to stick metal objects into fast moving and sharp blades, I expect to see you on the Darwin Awards).

It will look totally done after only a few seconds on high, but this is deceiving. There are still chunks.

Once you've got it whizzing around on high speed, give the smoothie a full minute in there. You'll need it, but you'll still likely end up with the odd blueberry that manages to escape unscathed.

Pour your delicious dinner into a tall glass and add a bendy straw!

That's your average 10-12 ounce glass. I was able to fill it up twice. 

And while I was slurping down the first one, the stuff in the blender didn't separate at all.

Smoothies store in the fridge just fine for a couple days and are totally portable. They make great grab-and-go breakfasts if you make them the night before and keep them in the fridge, or awesome afternoon snacks if you need a boost at work.

And if you get yourself some bags of prechopped frozen fruit, they take less than 3 minutes to make.

What's your favourite blender drink?

Cinnamon (Biscuit) Buns

The limit of biscuits as possibilities approach infinity is infinity. (calculus version)

You can make a lot of things with biscuits. (normal human version)

No, I will never be done doing calculus. I have at least 3 more semesters of it.

That's three more semesters of needing breakfasts on the go in the morning. And biscuits, in addition to being infinitely variable, are also highly portable.

This recipe, like most biscuit recipes, will also impress your brunch or overnight guests. They take about 10 minutes to prepare and 20 to bake, so it's very easy to have them made and on the table before anyone even realizes you're up.

So, we start with the basic biscuit recipe, just like we did when we were impressing Southern Boys, but we make a couple modifications. Instead of milk, or buttermilk, I used half orange juice and half milk. The OJ is a lovely background aroma that could totally be emphasized if you added a bit of orange zest to the cinnamon-butter mixture... but that's a few steps away still.

Cinnamon (Biscuit) Buns

What you need:

Biscuits:

• ½ c orange juice
• ½ c milk
• ½ c butter
• 1 c flour
• 4 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• ½ tsp vanilla (optional)

Cinnamon Filling:

• 1/4 c butter
• 1/4 c cinnamon sugar
• 1/2 tsp orange zest (optional)

What you gotta do:

So, just like last time, we start with cold butter, chopped into chunks, and flour, baking powder and salt (forgot to put the salt in the ingredients pic) in a bowl.

With a pastry cutter, or two knives, or, even two forks, chop the butter into smaller and smaller pieces until it looks more like crumbs than butter and flour.

In a measuring cup, combine the OJ and milk (and vanilla... I realized as I was eating the first one that a bit of vanilla would totally be awesome)

If you don't have oranges on hand to freshly squeeze, make sure you're using the "not from concentrate" kind of OJ. The concentrated stuff is often stripped of vitamins during the concentration process and reconstituted with a higher sugar content.

You could also use plain milk, buttermilk, or all OJ if you wanted. Just make sure you've got a cup of liquid and it's got some kind of acid content to react with the baking powder to fluff up your biscuits.

Mix the liquid into the flour-butter crumbs to get a soft, sticky dough.

My dough was very soft and sticky when I turned it out onto a very floured counter. Soft, sticky doughs make for sticky, doughy hands that are not good for taking pictures.

So, I floured and folded the dough (remember to only pat and fold biscuits, never knead them) until it was rollable.

Roll the folded rectangle into a flat rectangle. This was a seriously sticky dough and I needed a lot of flour. I also need a rolling pin, because a tumbler is not the best tool for rolling biscuit dough.

You want the dough only about a half inch thick.

See where it looks like it's kinda stuck to the counter? It was. Not enough flour. But, a butter knife works well to lift the stuck bits as you're rolling. And I happened to have a butter knife handy...

You want the butter for the filling to be nice and soft. Of course, my pound of butter was all cold (cold butter for biscuits, always) so I microwaved it for a few seconds... too long. Oops. Oh well, butter will harden again in the fridge.

So, I just poured in the cinnamon sugar,

and put it in the fridge for a few minutes until its consistency was more spreadable and less pourable.

Spread this sweet, cinnamony goo all over the biscuit dough.

And start rolling. Lift the stuck bits gently with the knife, and use floured hands so you don't stick to the dough.

Don't worry if it's not pretty and smooth. Baking does wonderful things to the appearance of dough.

Once it's all rolled up and floured, slice it into pieces that are 1 or 1.5 inches thick.

Use a sharp knife, but don't worry that the roll flattens. And it will flatten. Not a problem. Seriously.

Line a pan (or two) with parchment and reshape your biscuits as you put them in the pan(s). Leave a bit of space between them. They totally puff outwards because of all the folding and layering you did before you rolled them out.

See, they're round again. And in a 400 degree oven, holy crap do they get puffy fast.

That was after only 4 minutes!

After about 18, they look like this

Just barely golden brown on the edges, and the OJ has given them a nice yellowy, buttery look.

Once they've cooled, you can wrap them in pairs and freeze them for early morning grabbing.

If you wanted to go totally crazy with these, you could glaze them. OJ and icing sugar, or cream cheese and icing sugar would work just fine. Or you could put one on a plate and grab a cup of coffee and a good book and get back into bed.

What do you take in your coffee?