A song of milk and honey (and biscuits)

Anyone who’s been seeing my status updates on Facebook for the past few years knows I have random–and not-so-random–bouts of baking moods. There have been pictures I’ve posted of cakes and cookies and pies, etc. that I either experimented on or have bettered over subsequent bakings, and each time I never bother to put up recipes, because, frankly, I don’t always follow them to the letter (yeah, a math-person who bakes but doesn’t follow measurements, whodathunk?).

On a similar note, anyone who’s occasionally seen a status update from me has probably noticed that of the things I geek about, one of them happens to be HBO’s Game of Thrones, and, as a result, G.R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. Yes, I list them in that order, because that’s the order I started with.  Book series snobs can sniff and snort all they want, but as far as I’m concerned, any immersion into the world of Westeros is better than no immersion at all. (That said, since I actually, you know, read things occasionally, I probably do have something to say about the series in general, but that’s a separate post, probably much later once I’ve actually finished the next few books…which will take a while).

Anyway, my cousin seemed to have found an awesome way to bring these two loves above by giving me this:

Pretty nifty, huh?

I actually plan to do some of these recipes once season 4 of GoT rolls in (just in time for the upcoming 77-course wedding feast!), but I couldn’t help at least taking a bit of time to do two simple recipes beforehand: the iced milk with honey and the modern honey biscuits.

The recipes are pretty easy to follow, and I did a bit of tweaking. For some reason, whenever I bake biscuits/cookies, they never seem to go any flatter after being baked. I think this is mostly due to a number of factors (like outdated baking soda and a persnickety old oven), but taste-wise, I’d say the biscuits came out rather well! It wasn’t too sweet, even with the granulated sugar frosted over the top, and the taste of the honey didn’t overpower the rest of the spices, either. (Take note, however, that using a wooden spoon to mix the honey with the rest of the dry ingredients might result in an uneven dough mixture. I’ve had my sister and her boyfriend mention that one side of the cookie was sweet, another side was salty, and yet another was more gingery than normal. I suggest a more efficient mixing; in truth, kneading it by the hand or using an electric mixer on low might probably be more effective.)

As for the milk, I’m not as big of a honey ingester as the writers of the cookbook, so I lessened the honey to milk ratio to 1 tablespoon per 1 cup, as opposed to 2 per 1 cup of milk (low-fat, preferably). Oh, and since I didn’t exactly have any saffron lying around in the house (though maybe I should invest in some later), I used a pinch of cinnamon instead. It was really refreshing, and probably something I would do again, because it’s so quick to make.

Verdict: A delicious summertime treat washed down by a refreshing drink, and easily adapted to one’s sweet tooth–or lack thereof.