buttermilk bonanza

Last week was what I call “Birthday Week” here at Casa Sparklepants. Two out of the four of us have birthdays, so ideally it is a celebration fiasco. I made my go-to Buttermilk Chocolate Cake, which is pretty much the easiest and and best tasting chocolate cake I have ever had.

Well, I woke up this morning and as I was bleary eyed, sifting through the fridge looking for cream for my coffee, I found a barely used quart of buttermilk. Have you ever had to buy a key ingredient for a recipe and found that you have way too much left over and don’t know what to do with it?  Buttermilk. It tastes icky. But it’s so good in chocolate cake. Thank goodness I woke up enough not to poor the icky stuff in my coffee.

My goal for today was to cook as many things as I could with this buttermilk, hopefully using it up.

First up was a breakfast treat for the Sparkletots. I got Buttermilk Cinnamon Muffins recipe over at Bakingblonde. They were super easy and tasted kind of like Starbuck’s coffee cake. In fact, I might have told the Sparkletots that I got them at Starbucks. They sure are some picky eaters.

In my last Bountiful Baskets pick-up, we received a small bag of russet potatoes. I normally reserve potatoes for holidays, because they are so starchy and loaded with carbs. But since we had them I decided that some sinfully-rich mashed potatoes were in order.

Buttermilk Mashed Potatos

5 small to medium russet potatos – skin on cubed

½ cup buttermilk

6 tablespoons butter

1 teaspoon garlic salt

2 tablespoons chopped green onion

black pepper to taste

Boil the potato cubes, about 20 minutes, until the potato slides easily off the fork. Drain water and mash potatoes with fork. Mix in all ingredients and take big bites.

I honestly don’t know why it took me 32 years to figure out that making my own salad dressing is absolutely awesome! I have no reason to ever buy blue cheese dressing from the store ever again. It took some taste-testing to get it right, but here’s what I did.

Sparkle’s Blue Cheese Dressing

½ cup plain yogurt

½ cup mayonaise

¼ cup buttermilk

½ cup crumbled blue cheese

1 teaspoon Worchester Sauce

1 teaspoon garlic salt

½ teaspoon black pepper

Mix all ingredients together and let it sit in the fridge for a couple hours. If it’s too thin, add more mayo or yogurt, if it’s too thick, add more buttermilk.

This dressing is amazing on salad with some chopped up chicken, avocado and bacon. It is also great as a dip. And yes, I like to serve my crudité in orange martini glasses. I’ll take any excuse to use those glasses!