Recipe from the cookbook Southern Plate, by Christy Jordan, who has a wonderful web site of the same name, here.

Every Monday, we’ll post a recipe that we both made. This week’s recipe was from the cookbook Southern Plate (which we both own and which is awesome).

Your biscuit ingredients: Self-rising flour (or in my case, all-purpose flour, salt, and baking powder to make my own self-rising flour), a stick of softened butter, buttermilk. Also, you’ll use some flour for dusting, and additional butter, melted, for brushing the baked biscuits. (Please note: brushing the BAKED biscuits, not the about-to-be-baked biscuits.)

Put your self-rising flour in a bowl. If you don’t have self-rising flour, then put 2 1/4 cups of all-purpose flour in a bowl and add 1 Tablespoon and a SCANT 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder, and a heaping teaspoon of salt. Stir it together. (SCANT 1/2 teaspoon would be, basically, a teeny bit less than 1/2 teaspoon. But if you used the whole 1/2 teaspoon? I expect everything would be just fine. Don’t stress.)

Christy’s recipe calls for you to cut the butter into the flour with a long-tined fork. I don’t have a long-tined fork, so I used a pastry, um, thing. Cutter? Blender? Thingy? You’ve seen them, you know what they are, if you’ve got one use it. If you don’t, use a long-tined fork. If you don’t have that, use a couple of knives. Just shut up and do it.

Look. I’m cutting in the butter. It’s not hard, people. Cut it in ’til it looks all crumbly. Like crumbs. Then stick it in the fridge and set the timer for 10 minutes. Wander off, pet a cat, clean up the kitchen, whatever.

After 10 minutes, take the bowl out of the fridge, and add 1 1/4 cups of buttermilk. I had buttermilk on hand (which I rarely do), so I used that. If buttermilk’s the sort of thing you don’t keep around, you can add 1 T of lemon juice or white vinegar (I prefer lemon juice) to a one-cup measuring cup, fill it up the rest of the way with milk (Christy prefers whole milk; I use skim because that’s the kind of milk we use and it’s just fine) and let it sit for 5 minutes before using.

Once the buttermilk is added, stir it just until it’s moistened and holding together. You don’t want to stir it too much or you’ll get tough biscuits and no one wants that.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface (you can use your counter; I don’t put any kind of food directly on my counter because I have cats who walk on my counters – shut it with the horrified shuddering, or I will come leave a kitten on your doorstep – so I use a pastry mat.) and knead it three or four times, sprinkling flour as you do so to make the dough less sticky. Pat the dough out into a rectangle 3/4ish inches thick. Fold each side over into the center. Repeat two more times – pat the dough out, fold it over, etc.

Pat the dough out a final time until it is 1/2 inch thick. Cut with a biscuit cutter dipped in flour (I have a biscuit cutter, which is what I use, but  you can use a cup or glass that’s 3″ across (you can go bigger or smaller depending on your preference). Place the biscuits on the cookie sheet – which is either greased or lined with parchment paper – so that the sides are touching.

Bake for 12 – 15 minutes at 450F, until lightly browned. Remove from the oven and brush the tops with melted butter.

PLEASE NOTE: I am an idiot, and thus I wasn’t completely paying attention to what I was doing, and so I brushed the biscuits with the melted butter before I baked them. They turned out perfectly fine, but I bet they would have been better if I’d done as I was supposed to.

Serving suggestions: For breakfast with some tasty homemade jam, or for lunch/ dinner with some turkey soup! (Also, if you have sausage or bacon on hand, you could make your own egg and sausage or egg and bacon biscuit that would make Ronald McDonald cry sad jealous clown tears.) Fred would probably recommend making sausage gravy and eating your biscuits with gravy, but I’m not a fan of gravy so didn’t make any.

So in conclusion, I liked the recipe – it was easy to follow, even though I’m an idiot and can’t always follow the simplest of instructions. They turned out really good. Will I make them again? Probably not, though it’s not the recipe’s fault. I didn’t grow up in the South, y’see, so biscuits aren’t a staple of my diet and I don’t expect at this late stage of the game for that to change. Next time I need to make biscuits, this is the recipe I’ll fall back on – but I have no idea when that’ll be.

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Nance’s Spin

Be jealous of my fancy bookmark up there.

So we picked this recipe and I was all kinds of happy about it. The husband (aka: Rick) is a southern boy so he’s all about the biscuits. We’ve been trying to make biscuits for years and they have always been huge fails. I’m a Yankee girl and I love biscuits. Maybe Robyn doesn’t like them because she was a WAY UP THERE YANKEE. They’re snobs and I’m pretty sure that nobody wants a biscuit getting in the way of their lobster eating. Yuck. Gimme a biscuit with some butter (none of that margarine shit for me) and I’m good to go!

Robyn got me this cookbook for my birthday. I was all, “OHHELLNO, Is she sending me this because she doesn’t like my cooking?” That right there can kill a friendship. Or not. Because I really didn’t think that. But now I have to wonder and dammit, Robyn…I’m gonna send down a Pennsylvania Dutch cookbook so that you will know how I like my Ribble soup when I come visit! humph.

Anyway…I was excited to make this, but I was also a little nervous because I’ve made so many bad biscuits that Rick is pretty much wanting to just buy those biscuits in a can (blech) and call it a day. I guess he can’t take the disappointment any more. I even sent him out for buttermilk so I could make this. Did Robyn say she had that IN HER HOUSE? Who keeps Buttermilk around and for what? She’s such a freak. I bet she’s baking special treats up for those damn chickens that stand around gossiping about people in that special clucking language they have. So rude.

Check me out, I have a biscuit cutter too (Robyn ain’t all that).

I see Snobby Magee took a photo of all the ingredients (see: Goody-Two-Shoes) so I’m just posting a picture of my mess.  I am always afraid to touch the biscuit concoction too much because I heard that makes them tough.  This time I followed Christy’s recipe to the letter.  Another thing I hate about making biscuits (besides the possible failure and how it makes me feel like I would have died out on the plains back in the day) is the mess.  Goddamn, making biscuits is hard on someone with OCD.  The flour everywhere and the sticking your HANDS in foodstuff.  Ugh.  It’s hell.  But I persevered.

It was SO WORTH IT.  Light and fluffy.  Fabulous.  Would I make the recipe again?  DEFINITELY.  But I can honestly say that this is not going in my regular rotation.  These bad boys are just going to have to be a once in a blue moon treat.