Biscuits

Biscuits a small, typically round cake of bread leavened with baking powder, baking soda, or sometimes yeast.

Nothing beats a batch of homemade biscuits; warm and golden brown from the oven, smothered with butter and honey.  When I was a child, my mom often made biscuits to accompany soups or just to have as a feel-good snack or breakfast.  They were my first comfort food. (Before that phrase became popular.) In graduate school in my early 20’s I lived on biscuits and Diet Pepsi. 

I have my mom’s biscuit recipe written in the back of a cookbook I have had since 1993.  The cookbook is called the Enchanted Broccoli Forest by Mollie Katzen.  In this cookbook there is a recipe by the same title. This recipe, this enchanted broccoli forest, consists of a rice pilaf with trees planted in it. I made it once and only once, 29 years ago.  It was a great idea that just didn’t work.  The broccoli trees all bent their trunks when cooked.  It was a sad sight like a forest of blight or newly planted trees in a windstorm. 

The recipe for mom’s biscuits is handwritten in pencil on the back cover of this cookbook.  I refer to it each time I make the biscuits.  My husband teases me about this.  He says that he is sure I know it by heart and don’t need to look at the recipe.  He challenges me to try it sometime without looking and see what happens.  I’m sure that I know the recipe too.  But looking at it connects me to the history in the recipe. 

When I was a child that recipe was on an index card taped to the inside door of the baking cupboard. It was smudged with flour and vanilla and sticky fingerprints.  I don’t know where it came from originally. I could wax romantic and say it was from my great grandmother to my grandmother to my mom passed down with an air of baking tradition, but I know better than that.  It probably simply came from the Better Homes and Garden’s cookbook and was written on a card for ease of use.  It doesn't matter where it came from. What matters is the joy and love baked into those simple biscuits. 

Mom’s Biscuit Recipe 

2 cups of flour

1 tablespoon of baking powder

½ teaspoon of baking soda

Dash of sugar

Sift above together (or not, I rarely do)

½ cup of shortening (butter is good.  Crisco is better. Combine the 2 even better!  Never said it was healthy)

2/3 cup of milk

Mix with a pastry cutter or a fork

Roll out to ¼” thick and either cut into squares or use a round cookie cutter. If you feel really lazy (I often do) dump a tablespoon or so into a muffin tin for rustic style biscuits

Bake at 450 for 12-14 minutes.

For the record, yes, I know this recipe by heart. I just typed it up without looking.

From my heart to yours…enjoy some biscuits.