Baking Powder Biscuits

As promised earlier, here is a great recipe that uses buttermilk! You can actually use regular milk too, or a combination. Whatever you have. I'm willing to bet it would turn out okay with water too but I'd stick to some form of milk if you have it on hand. The base recipe is from here but, as usual, I make some changes. The most significant change is in how the biscuits are formed. With biscuit dough, you want to handle it as little as possible or the biscuits will be tough and flat. To avoid over handling the dough (and to avoid getting the table, rolling pin and a glass dirty), I've always just formed the dough into little balls instead of rolling it out. It works out great! If you follow the directions exactly, you'll end up with perfect, fluffy, yummy biscuits that can't be beat.

Quick note: Just like you can use regular milk or buttermilk, you can use shortening or butter (cold or room temperature) for the fat or a combination. I've made these biscuits many times and done them all the possible ways. They always turn out perfectly. You could also brush melted butter on them after removing them from the oven if the urge strikes you.


Baking Powder Biscuits

2 C flour
1 T sugar
1 T baking powder
1 t salt
1/3 C shortening or butter
at least 1/2 C buttermilk or milk

Preheat your oven to 425 and grease a round cake pan. In a medium mixing bowl, stir together flour, sugar, baking powder and sat. Cut the shortening or butter into pieces (about 8) and add it to the flour mixture. Use your hand to crumble the fat into the dry stuff until the mixture looks like coarse cornmeal. Stir in the milk with a spoon. Add a little bit more until you have a dough that is just a tiny bit wet. Just stir until it's combined and be careful not to over mix! If you put in too much milk you can add flour a tablespoon at a time to fix it, but it's best to just not add too much milk to begin with. Once your dough is ready, gently form it into 8 balls and flatten them slightly so they're 1 inch thick. Arrange in the cake pan. Bake 15 minutes or until the tops of the biscuits are golden.

Yield: 8 biscuits