Everyday Baking, Cooking, and Crafts

Delicious, Delectable, Flaky, & Moist Biscuits

Most Texans like biscuits for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Just ask anyone from Texas, and they'll agree. We can throw a biscuit on a plate with any meal. Some folks like biscuits with their breakfast and slather it with butter and a shovel full of jelly. Others like it smothered with sausage gravy and topped with an egg. My husband was born and raised in Tennesse, and he likes his biscuit drizzled with maple syrup. I say, put a biscuit on my plate, anytime, and call the meal complete!

My grandmothers, on both sides of my family, were excellent cooks. One grandmother, as a child, had pigs and chickens, the other grew up on a cotton farm and had chickens. All of them were poor but didn't know it. They ate what they raised or grew. I remember watching my grandmothers, aunts, and my mom working tirelessly in a hot kitchen and prepared meals for our families.
They didn't complain... much, about the heat or hard work and enjoyed the ooh's and ahh's of the people gathered around the table that gobbled down the scrumptious home-cooked food.

The biscuits were served as a sponge to mop up gravies, dunk in soups, or garnish with homemade jams and jellies for dessert. No matter how you like to serve up your meal, just slap a biscuit on the plate and call it gone.

Here's what you'll need:

2 cups of Self-Rising Flour

1 cup heavy whipping cream
Plus, 2 tablespoons of whipping cream to brush over the tops of the biscuits before baking.
1 stick unsalted butter, grated
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons sugar

Equipment:
Oven
Bowl & measuring cups
Measuring spoons
Wooden spoon
Rolling pin
Grater
Round cake pans
Parchment paper
Non-stick cooking spray
Something to cut out the biscuits. (I have a biscuit cutter, but I watched my grandmother use an empty vegetable can.)
Oven mitts
Timer

Directions:

1) Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

2) Grate one stick of unsalted butter.

3) Measure out flour, salt, and sugar into a large bowl; stir in the butter with the flour. Don't try to mix it into the dough just yet. Slightly, coat the butter with the flour and mash any extra large lumps but leave the mixture coarse and lumpy. Place the bowl in the freezer for 10 minutes.

4) Cut out some round pieces of parchment paper to line the bottoms of the round cake pans. Spray with non-stick cooking spray.

5. Get the bowl out of the freezer and pour in the 1 cup of whipping cream. Stir. It will look dry.

6. Lightly flour a flat surface to knead the dough and roll it out. Knead the dough until it forms a smooth ball.

7. Again, lightly flour the surface and also the rolling pin. Roll out the dough to about 1/2 inch thick. Fold it over and roll it out again. Do this 3 more times. The last time roll out the dough to 1/2 inch thick. You will notice some butter chunks in the dough, and this is good!

I used a food processor to grate the butter.

8. Place the cut round biscuits into the pans and allow the biscuits to touch. Re-roll any leftover dough and cut out more biscuits until all the dough is used up.

9. Brush the tops of the biscuits with the extra whipping cream.

10. Bake the unbaked biscuits in the center of the oven for about 10-15 minutes at 400 degrees F, or until lightly golden brown.

11. Remove and serve hot with butter, or gravy, or chipped beef in gravy, or sausage gravy, or jelly, or syrup, fresh fruit, and whipped cream... use your imagination and go for it.

DE-licious!