So here’s something new (or, it’s new for me, at least) — butter dumplings.

Their actual name is “butter rolls,” but I think that’s all wrong. These are biscuits baked in butter; therefore, butter dumplings.

And before we go any further, let’s get this straight: there is nothing, absolutely nothing, healthy about these babies. Don’t even try to justify.

I discovered this recipe in Rick Bragg’s book The Best Cook in the World: Tales from My Momma’s Table. It was the first one in the book, and so inspiring was his writing that I had no choice but to leap to my feet and make a batch right then and there. (Bragg has that effect on me. Just two days ago, I slammed the book down mid-paragraph and galloped out to the kitchen to make a grilled cheese-and-grape jelly sandwich.)

I slipped the dumplings in the oven at the same time we sat down for supper. My food scarfed, I entertained everyone by reading from the book’s introduction, part of which, it just so happened, was about the very buttered dumplings that I was making. While I read, I had to hop up once to flip the dumplings in their bubbling, sugary-milk bath, and then again a second time to pull them from the oven and fill dessert bowls. I continued reading then, though every now and then my words were drowned out by startled pleasure-gasps: Oh, WOW, and, Mmm, this is good, and, Yeah, REALLY good.

Nothing more than plain biscuits set afloat in a lake of sweetened condensed milk and butter, vanilla and cinnamon, I consider these the Southern equivalent of an emergency dessert. The cook is already making biscuits for dinner anyway, so instead of rustling up a whole different dessert, she (or he) just holds a few biscuits back and cracks open a can of sweetened condensed milk. Easy-peasy.

As the biscuits bake, the liquid boils down, transforming into a thick, gently-spiced caramel syrup. Fresh from the oven, the dumplings look an awful lot like an alien planet, or oatmeal, or maybe cancer cells, but be ye not dismayed! 

Place a sticky hot dumpling in a bowl, or on a plate that you picked up from the Gift and Thrift, and spoon a little sauce over top. Weirdly enough, they taste just like apple dumplings but without the apples.

I like my dumplings sizzling hot (the leftovers reheat just fine in the microwave) and then drowned in a goodly amount of cold milk. Sliced fresh banana is a fine addition, too. 

Butter Dumplings 
Adapted from The Best Cook in the World by Rick Bragg

My younger son complains that these are too sweet. He may have a point. Perhaps next time I’ll reduce the sugar to just a half cup.

For a thinner sauce — and for more of it — add a little extra milk.

For the biscuits, you can use whatever biscuit recipe you like, but Rick’s mother’s is as follows: Work several tablespoons of lard into about three cups of self-rising flour. Stir in a half cup of buttermilk and a bit of water, maybe a couple tablespoons. Combine to make a dough and then pinch off pieces, rolling them into balls and patting flat into smallish biscuits.

8-9 smallish biscuits
1 12-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
½ cup milk, at least
1 cup sugar (or less)
1 teaspoon each vanilla and cinnamon
1 stick butter

Directly in the baking dish (a 9×13-inch pan is too big but an 8×8-inch square is definitely too small), whisk together the condensed milk, regular milk, sugar, and spices. Cube the butter and distribute evenly over top the liquid.

Lay the biscuits on top of the liquid, briefly pushing them under with your fingertips so the tops get wet. It is of utmost importance to not, under any circumstances, crowd the biscuits. If you do, they will grow together in the oven and the whole thing will be ruined.

Bake the dumplings at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and gently flip each dumpling. Return the pan to the oven and bake another 10 minutes or so.

Serve warm, with cold milk.

This same time, year previous: what kind of stove should we buy?, omeletty egg bake, the quotidian (1.25.16), a wedding, sour cream and berry baked oatmeal, about a picture, swimming in the sunshine, Friday evening fun, Gretchen’s green chili.

When we were in Pennsylvania, Amber served us baked oatmeal for breakfast. She’d mixed it up the evening before, after we’d cleaned up from the birthday dinner, stirring together oats and sugar, milk and eggs. She divided the batter between two pans and then grabbed a bag of blueberries from the freezer and, sprinkling out a generous amount, covered the tops of the cakes completely. The she slipped the pans into the cold oven and set it for delayed bake.

I was fascinated. The batter didn’t sour overnight? Would the blueberries sink in? What else did she use her delay bake for? Did the oven turn off automatically? Had she ever burned anything? And so on.

The baked oatmeals were delicious. Their overnight rest had softened and plumped the oats, and the cakes baked up high, the blueberries capping the cake with juicy sweetness.

Back home, my husband and I studied the oven manual, trying to figure out the fancy settings. We first set the clock and then the delay bake, and then we stood there, waiting for the oven to whoosh on at the appointed time — I certainly didn’t want to burn the house down while we slept. Satisfied that all was in working order, I mixed up a batch of Amber’s baked oatmeal and popped it in the oven.

The next morning, I was still in bed when I heard the oven peep that it was at temperature. Soon after, the smell of baking oats wafted up the stairs. By the time I walked into the kitchen, breakfast was five minutes from being done.

While similar to my standard recipe, Amber’s is a little less sweet and more cake-like, thanks to the overnight soak. In my recipe — a fast mix-and-bake affair — the oats rise to the top a little, leaving a thin custardy layer of buttery egg on the bottom. I liked that sweet layer, but the children did not. Amber’s recipe, now, they much prefered.

“It’s way better, Mom,” my older son said. “Way better.”

I agree.

Also, delay bake is awesome and I love my oven.
The end.


Overnight Baked Oatmeal 
Adapted from Amber’s recipe.

The first time I made this, I used rolled oats, but then I discovered a sack of quick cooking steel cut oats — they looked very similar to Amber’s hand-rolled oats — and snatched them right up. It’s funny though — Amber fusses about her hand-rolled oats. She thinks they make her granola and baked oatmeal too chewy. But the chewiness is exactly what we love! Do what you want: For a more nubbly, nutty baked oatmeal, use the Costco fancy cut oats, or regular rolled oats, and for a cakier baked oatmeal, use quick oats. Either way, it will be delicious.

Amber uses a scale to measure her oil — just plops the mixing bowl on the scales, tares it, and then glug-glugs in the oil — so she doesn’t have to dirty a measuring cup.

4½ cups rolled oats
¾ cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1¼ teaspoon salt
3 eggs
1½ cups milk
6 tablespoons (75 grams) oil
¾ cup (200 grams) applesauce
2 cups frozen blueberries, optional

Stir together the dry ingredients and mix in the wet (except for the blueberries). Pour the batter into a buttered 9×12-inch pan. Sprinkle the blueberries on top — I lightly stirred them into the top layer of batter, but Amber did not.

Let the pan sit on the counter, or in a cold oven, at room temperature overnight. In the morning, bake for 30 minutes (40 minutes, if using delay bake) at 350 degrees.

Serve warm, with milk. (Or, ignore the coffee shop’s “no outside food or drink” sign and eat cold, out of a tupperware box, breaking off bite-sized pieces and shoveling them into your mouth when no one is looking, shh.)

This same time, years previous: a new routine, the quotidian (1.23.17), and so it begins, hobo beans, rocks in my granola and other tales, polenta and greens, chuck roast braised in red wine.

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (1.22.18), the women’s march on Washington, lemon cream cake, lazy stuffed cabbage rolls, cream cheese dip, world’s best pancakes.