With the holidays and family visits behind us, Monique and I have taken to focusing on our eating and exercising habits again. Therefore, this weekend Monique developed a weekly menu and shopping list based on the menu plan, we are now limiting our three main meals to only 400 calories, or 1,600 calories per day with two 200-calorie snacks. Note: Click on images for a larger view.
For Saturday and Sunday breakfast, Monique made from scratch two different drop biscuit recipes, both from the Weight Watchers magazine “Six O’Clock Solutions”, a cookbook we have been using since 2001. I must say these recipes are actually quite good and healthy too.
You will find after reading through these two recipes that there are similarities between biscuits, and that is typically that butter or fat is cut into the flour and rising agents creating what is known as the “dry” ingredients. Then a separate bowl of “wet” ingredients is prepared. Once both sets of ingredients are ready, they are combined to form the biscuit dough. In the two “drop” biscuit dough recipes here they are ready to place on the sheet pans, no rolling and cutting is necessary, just use two large spoons to scrape off tablespoon portions and “drop” them onto the cooking sheets.
Oatmeal Drop Biscuits
On Saturday Monique made the Oatmeal Drop Biscuits found on page 16 and in keeping with “drop biscuits” these are literally dropped from a spoon rather than rolled, creating a rough, cobblestone-like appearance, and are so easy to make. We have made a few modifications from the original recipe, we use only butter, but the recipe calls for margarine. Another modification we made in the recipe is it call for baking for 8 minutes, we found this too short a time for our oven and baked them for 14 to 16 minutes.
According to the recipe these biscuits are 2 points each, contain 99 calories, 0.9g fiber, 3 grams fat, and 2.7 grams protein. If you wish to follow these nutritional informational’s you will have to use margarine in place of the butter.
Yield: 16 biscuits
| Ingredients | ||
| 1 ¼ | Cups | All purpose flour |
| 3 | Tbsp | Butter, chilled, cut into small pieces |
| 1 ½ | Tsp | Baking powder |
| ½ | Tsp | Salt |
| 1 ¼ | Cups | Quick-cooking oats |
| ½ | Cup | Skim milk |
| 3 | Tbsp | Honey |
| 1 | Lg. | Egg, lightly beaten |
| Cooking spray | ||
| Procedure Steps | |
| 1. | Pre-heat oven to 425° F. |
| 2. | In the bowl of a food processor, add the flour, butter, baking powder, salt, and process for until the mixture looks like coarse meal, or about 20 seconds of pulsing. |
| 3. | Add the oats and process another 5 seconds or so. |
| 4. | In another bowl combine the skim milk, honey and egg, then add this to the flour mixture and process for another 5 seconds or until moist throughout. |
| 5. | Grease a baking sheet with cooking spray or butter and drop the dough by rounded tablespoonfuls onto the sheet pan. |
| 6. | Bake at 425° F for 14 minutes or until browned on top. |
Orange Drop Biscuits
On Sunday Monique made the Orange Drop Biscuits found on page 66 and we modified the recipe a bit here by following the similar food processor technique from the previous biscuits, even though this one has your hand cut the butter into the flour with a pastry blender or 2 kitchen knives. The food processor method is so quick and achieves the same results. The orange marmalade in these biscuits really adds a great flavor, and they do not need any added butter or jam, perfect with a cup of fresh coffee in the morning. Again, several of the ingredients we changed out so the nutritional information may not exactly match those listed below from the original recipe, but it gives you an idea of where it has been modified. The margarine in the original recipe was traded out with butter, the original 1% low-fat cottage cheese was traded out with 2% low-fat cottage cheese and we omitted ¾ teaspoon of grated orange peel from the original recipe, but I am sure it would add even more orange flavor in addition to the orange marmalade. We also doubled the cooking time from 8 minutes to 16, our oven took longer to get them to a nice golden brown on top, and your mileage may vary.
According to the recipe these biscuits are 1 point each, contain 38 calories, 0.2 g fiber, 1 gram fat, and 1.3 g protein. If you wish to use these nutritional informational’s you will need to use margarine and 1% low-fat cottage cheese.
Yield: 24 biscuits
| Ingredients | ||
| 1 ¼ | Cups | All-purpose flour |
| 1 | Tbsp | Sugar |
| 1 ½ | Tsp | Baking powder |
| ¼ | Tsp | Baking soda |
| 3 | Tbsp | Butter, chilled, cut into small pieces |
| 1/3 | Cup | 2% low-fat cottage cheese |
| ¼ | Cup | Egg substitute |
| 3 | Tbsp | Low-sugar orange marmalade |
| Cooking spray | ||
| Procedure Steps | |
| 1. | Preheat oven to 400° F. |
| 2. | Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and baking soda in the bowl of a food processor and mix for 5 seconds. Then add the butter and process until the mixture looks like a coarse meal. |
| 3. | In a separate bowl, combine the cottage cheese, egg substitute, and marmalade. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and process until moist throughout, or about 5 to 10 seconds. |
| 4. | Drop the dough by rounded tablespoonfuls onto a greased sheet pan. |
| 5. | Bake at 400° F for 16 minutes or until a nice golden brown. |
26 responses so far ↓
1 wasabi prime // Jan 12, 2010 at 12:08 pm
Yum, these would be a grand treat at breakfast!
2 Sook // Jan 12, 2010 at 12:25 pm
I love biscuits! I’ve never made them at home but I think I should try it one of these days. Love the title of this post by the way. 🙂
3 Drick // Jan 12, 2010 at 1:43 pm
yea…. a good recipe for breakfast biscuits … last time I attempted, they were hard-tacts….
4 The Hungry Mouse // Jan 12, 2010 at 2:07 pm
LOVE drop biscuits. Not like it’s a ton of work to roll out biscuits. But still. 😉 These look great.
+Jessie
5 Emily // Jan 12, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Those look heavenly!
6 Trix // Jan 12, 2010 at 2:22 pm
Ok, if biscuits can be part of a diet, I wanna be on that diet… I wanna be on YOUR diet!!
7 Ryan Boudreaux // Jan 12, 2010 at 2:36 pm
@Jessie, yes the eliminated step of kneading and rolling saves time and steps too, but like you said, not rocket science either.
@Trix, lol, the diet we are on is to limit our calories to 400 a meal, or 1,600 calories per day with two 200 calorie snacks. These biscuits range from 99 calories each for the oatmeal and 38 for the orange (when prepared in the original fashion).
8 Alta // Jan 12, 2010 at 2:39 pm
Yum! My issues with biscuits, is that most recipes make 8-10-12 of them. And so even if they’re low in calories, I still am tempted to eat multiple biscuits. Because, ya know, they just won’t taste as good tomorrow!
9 averagebetty // Jan 12, 2010 at 2:43 pm
Nothing like a hot buttered biscuit! Love the addition of oatmeal too 🙂
10 Gera @ Sweets Foods Blog // Jan 12, 2010 at 4:10 pm
I want these buttery biscuits especially indicated for a diet, the orange one must be scrumptious 🙂
Cheers,
Gera
11 Rochelle (Acquired Taste) // Jan 12, 2010 at 4:44 pm
I like drop biscuits but I never thought to add oatmeal to them! I’ll have to remember to that next time I make some 🙂
12 Waiting Around // Jan 12, 2010 at 4:51 pm
I will give these biscuits a try. I have always loved James Beard’s biscuit recipe made with cream but since that is a no-no on my diet I am happy to have your recipe! I’ll let you know how it goes.
13 Jessie // Jan 12, 2010 at 5:20 pm
I love biscuits period. lol These biscuits are great since they do not require any rolling out or cutting.
14 Carol Egbert // Jan 12, 2010 at 6:13 pm
A diet that makes the kitchen smell good. Sounds like a winner.
15 pegasuslegend // Jan 12, 2010 at 9:06 pm
yumm I love these they look fantastic!
16 Conor @ HoldtheBeef // Jan 12, 2010 at 9:13 pm
I really like the ‘chunkiness’ of these biscuits. Great that they’re only 99 calories each, but I guess it’s a matter of not eating the whole batch at once 🙂
17 Almost Slowfood // Jan 12, 2010 at 11:48 pm
I love drop biscuits! Those orange ones look especially tasty.
18 penny aka jeroxie // Jan 13, 2010 at 2:10 am
Yummy biscuits. And these seems really easy to make as well. Another keeper.
19 Tweets that mention A Tale of Two Drop Biscuits ~ Cajun Chef Ryan -- Topsy.com // Jan 13, 2010 at 3:35 am
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by CajunChefRyan and Todd, morley. morley said: A Tale of Two Drop Biscuits ~ Cajun Chef Ryan: The margarine in the original recipe was traded out with butter,.. http://bit.ly/8E2gp8 […]
20 Divina // Jan 13, 2010 at 9:51 am
Beautiful breakfast or even a snack. Thanks for including the nutritional information too.
21 Roti n Rice // Jan 13, 2010 at 10:02 am
Looks yummy! Interesting name for your post 🙂
22 sweetlife // Jan 14, 2010 at 11:35 am
Oh I love drop biscuits, great breakfast item.
23 redkathy // Jan 15, 2010 at 8:57 am
Drop biscuits, now that’s my style. Bet the orange marmalade was superb! Great tip, thanks Ryan.
24 Ryan Boudreaux // Jan 15, 2010 at 10:11 am
=:~)
25 marla {Family Fresh Cooking} // Jan 16, 2010 at 10:19 am
Great call swapping out the trans fatty margarine for wholesome yummy butter! They should update that ingredient in their cookbook. Both versions of these drop biscuits sound great…it would be very difficult to eat just one!
26 timethief // Jan 17, 2010 at 12:15 am
I love drop biscuits and have never thought of the orange variation hmmmmm … guess what we’ll be making soon. 😉
Thanks