Thursday, November 27, 2008

“I was told there’d be biscuits.”

...and there are! :D

EDIT: Okay, as of September 2010, I have finally found the original paper copy of this damn recipe and have fixed it. The actual amount of milk is 3/4 cups. If you are using soy milk, per the lovely Calista, you will likely need one and one quarter cups of it.


They were born from the barely legible photocopy of a recipe, originally produced on an electric typewriter, handed out in seventh grade home economics class. The amounts of each ingredient were written entirely in teaspoons and fractions thereof, I suppose as an exercise to teach seventh-graders the conversion from teaspoons to cups and tablespoons. (We had yet to be visited by the saving grace of online unit-conversion sites, nor even desktop converter widgets.)

The title of the recipe is “Delicious Biscuits.”

The title is correct.

So delicious are the biscuits, in fact, that I have been compelled to keep safe the original page for more than a decade, render the teaspooniness out of it, and at long last commend it to the open internet where it can spread its powers of biscuitry to the ends of the earth.

Here y’all go:

Delicious Biscuits

2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted*
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup shortening
3/4 cup milk

*can switch to 1 cup all-purpose and 1 cup wheat flour if desired; increase milk to one cup

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Sift all the dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking powder) together in a bowl. Add the shortening and cut it in with a pastry cutter or a fork until it’s in small enough crumbly pieces that it sorta vanishes into the dry ingredients. Add the milk all at once and stir it in to make a sticky dough. Turn dough out onto a well-floured surface and knead 8 to 10 times. Roll dough to about 0.5 inch thick (or a little thinner) and cut out circles with a cutter or a floured glass. Place biscuits on a baking sheet about an inch apart. Bake in preheated oven for 10 minutes, or until biscuits are lightly browned and delicious-looking.

Godspeed, biscuits. Godspeed.

(Happy Thanksgiving! 感謝祭おめでとう!)

6 comments:

Nikki said...

These need to happen in my microwave-oven. Now if I could just find some gorram'd Crisco in J-land . . .

Ku said...

You CAN find short'nin'! Or, at least, I was able to... it was by the mixes for pamcaeks and such, in a small white'n'yellow plastic box, along with other things for dessert-makin'.

Yahari, ショートニング to yobareta. XD

Calista said...

I was so inspired by this post that I went and made biscuits from your recipe just now! I made a vegan version, using coconut oil (solid at room temperature) instead of regular shortening, and soy milk instead of cow milk.

Btw, I think there's an error in your recipe -- 1/4 cup of milk to 2 cups flour seems like much too little liquid. I tried 1 1/4 cup milk and that seemed to work just fine.

These were my first biscuits ever! I'm so happy to have this recipe now. Thank you!

Ku said...

Doumodoumo! I'm glad they turned out for you. :D

I rechecked the recipe, but the numbers are right. I might know what the trouble was, though; did you sift your flour? If not, it won't take whatever liquid (milk, soy milk, vodka, etc) you put into it in the same way as it would sifted. Sifting breaks the loose static bonds that cause flour to clump, allowing more surface area to come into direct contact with the milk.

Then again, I don't know the specific properties of soy milk... it might be even less willing to combine with flour. ;_; As long as you've got a way to make it work, though, hurrah! ^_^

Bigfangirl said...

those sound awesome ^^ I think I'll make them for my little brother :D

Ku said...

OH SNAP, I effed up! Calista, you were right! It IS 1/2 cup of milk! I was using my scribbled-up sheet with the out-of-teaspoons measurements and I wrote things too close together...I've since changed it in the actual post; Thank you for your vigilance! I'm sorry! o.<