French Fridays with Dorie: Saint-Germain-des-Prés onion biscuits

This week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe – Saint Germain des Prés onion biscuits – was clearly not meant to be. Unless, of course you live in Australia where the above  ^^^^^ is a perfectly acceptable rendition of what one might consider a “biscuit”. However, Dorie was not referring to what North Americans might call a “cookie” or a “cracker”, her recipe is for those fluffy bready things that Aussies might call a sort of a “scone”. Confused? You should be.

First off, I am not huge fan of biscuits (sorry food blog world).  But Dorie’s recipe seemed so easy that I figured what could go wrong. I mean, as you will know if you follow me on Twitter or Instagram – I’m eatlivtravwrite there as well – or live with me, I have made SIX batches of macarons in the past three weeks. With little or no issue.  I figured I could handle some flour and butter and milk, right? WRONG!

Seriously – what IS WRONG with me????  How could I mess this up?  I might have rolled the dough a week bit thin (that was purposeful – I was going to make breakfast sandwiches with them and wanted them thinner) but they never ever rose at all. Not one millimetre.  And they were crunchy. Kind of like shortbreads. Normally, I would be mortified and be back in the kitchen trying to get them right. If they were macarons, I definitely would have. But I don’t care for biscuits enough to have tried again. So I didn’t. And I had a wee glass of rosé with my “onion crackers”. And it was delicious. And I was ok with that.

French Fridays with Dorie participants do not publish the recipes on our blogs, rather, we prefer if you purchase Around My French Table for yourselves (trust me, you definitely want this book!) which you can do here on Amazon or Amazon Canada. Or for free worldwide shipping, buy from The Book Depository. Go on, treat yourself and join us this year!

Speaking of FRENCH, did you see my latest article for Food Network Canada – all about cooking classes in Paris!

AND – did you know – I am leading a foodie tour of Paris this July! Read all about it here.


 

51 thoughts on “French Fridays with Dorie: Saint-Germain-des-Prés onion biscuits”

  1. Your crackers look so pretty! 😉

    I can relate to your failure this week. To date I have never made a biscuit that rose properly or didn’t look like a little hockey puck. A true shame – I love biscuits!

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  2. Your “crackers” looks fabulous, Mardi 😉 And your food styling is impeccable as always! So sorry, though, that they didn’t rise…how frustrating!

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  3. We can pretend you planned this super original take on Dorie’s recipe!
    I think they look great and am excited at how they turned out for you!
    Mine didn’t rise but just looked like flat pancakes, so very impressed with your “crackers!”

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  4. Weird! I am so curious as to what happened … it reminds me of a time I was trying to make a soft kind of flatbread and it turned into these giant crispy crackery things. To this day I do not know what I did … just go with it, right? : )

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  5. Oh, Mardi! They still look pretty. I truly hope you were able to enjoy a glass of wine with them.
    Considering the magic you create with macarons, I think you can safely relegate these to bottom of the pile and never look back.

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  6. I think the perfect wine pairing for these are….anything that soothes the soul of a frustrated baker. 😉

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  7. They may not be “proper” biscuits, but they certainly do look delicious! Why is it that biscuits are so tricky? For something that doesn’t taste that magical, they sure are prima donnas! If you hadn’t said that they were supposed to rise, I would never have guessed, they’re still gorgeous 🙂

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  8. I think your onion crackers look good…I think you’ve come up with a new, original recipe! After baking mine, which did not puff up as well as I’d have liked, I decided to toss my baking powder…time for a new can. But, honestly, I like your crackers.

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  9. Ha! When things like this happen to me I just rebrand them. Call them “french crackers”. I’ll bet these were tasty if not so fluffy. Thanks for posting though. I wish we would all share more of the things that don’t work out so great.

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  10. Oh, Mardi, who cares if they fluffed up? Crackers are plenty good and you can do so many things with them that biscuits just don’t work right with. Besides I like crunchy and these look delicious, I mean.. onion and cracker.. add a little goat cheese on top and you’re good to go 😀

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  11. Great to see the post anyway! Nice to know that even great bloggers like you mess up every once in a while 🙂

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  12. Weird! Mine came out thin and dry, but not THAT thin and dry. lol Who needs biscuits when your a master of macarons, anyway? Oh man, I love me some macarons. I’m impressed!

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  13. If I didn’t know those were supposed to be biscuits I would think they looked wonderful! I’m sorry these didn’t work out for you, but at least you enjoyed some of your “crackers” with a glass of wine.

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  14. Interesting. I also purposely rolled my dough thinner, but did get a nice little rise. I wanted to use mine more like a piece of toast or bread. They look nice and flaky like a great little cocktail cookie. Just add wine, champagne or cocktail!

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  15. Welcome. I love to have a sister-in-baking-disasters to moan and groan with. Although I had no trouble with this week’s baking power biscuits, I have had my share of baking disasters. I didn’t even attempt rugelach.

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  16. Well, they look pretty. They are so flat, it made me wonder whether your baking powder has expired? Or you forgot to add? I guess if you’re not a huge biscuit fan, you’re not going to be trying these again. Oh, well. On to next week!

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  17. I had a similar problem when I made these biscuits yesterday. Flat and stodgy rather than tall and fluffy. Considered that my baking powder was out of date, but it wasn’t. This was the first recipe I’ve tried from Around My French Table and hope that the next one won’t be so disappointing. Plan on making the Lamb and Dried Apricot Tangine for family next Sunday. Slightly worried.

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      • I’ve just cottoned on to the focus of your website. I was directed here through a Google search for how others fared with the biscuit recipe and was focused on that. Please for the connection though. Great food blog.

        Reply

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