Touch of Grace Biscuits

I've made a lot of biscuits. I've added flavors, cut them into rounds or squares or other shapes. I've baked them squished together and I've baked them spaced apart.

But I've never baked biscuits like this before.

This recipe is from Food52 Genius Recipes, and was created by Shirley Corriher. You might know her as the cooking expert who sometimes appeared on Good Eats. She really is a cooking expert, so I felt confident the recipe would work, even though it's pretty strange.

I've made some biscuit recipes where the dough was pretty wet. But this dough is much wetter than any of those. The book describes the dough as looking like cottage cheese, and that's exactly what it's like - lumpy bits with a thinner "sauce."

But it totally works. Totally. And not only does it work, but the biscuits are amazingly good. Not only were they good, but they were good the next day, and the day after that. Most biscuits get stale pretty quickly, but these stayed good for a few days - which was all the time it took them to disappear. They were particularly amazing when I heated them for a few seconds in the microwave.

Yup. Biscuits re-warmed in the microwave.

I've made these biscuits three times so far, and the first two times I didn't have exactly the ingredients I needed, but they held up well to the adaptations.

The first time, I didn't have the required buttermilk, so I substituted milk mixed with Greek yogurt. The biscuits were delicious.

The second time, I didn't have enough heavy cream - and I still didn't have buttermilk. And I was out of yogurt that I used in the first substitution, So I substituted milk for the missing cream, and I substituted milk mixed with sour cream for the buttermilk. The biscuits worked out perfectly.

I highly recommend this recipe. And I urge you to NOT be worried about how wet the dough is.

Touch-of-Grace Biscuits
Adapted from Food52 Genius Recipes
Recipe by Shirley Corriher

2 cups (9 ounces) self-rising flour
2 tablespoons* sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup shortening
2/3 cup heavy cream
1 cup buttermilk (or enough for the dough to resemble cottage cheese - you might need more or less, depending on the flour you use.)
1 cup all purpose flour, for shaping
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, for brushing

Heat the oven to 425 degrees with the right slightly below the center of the oven. Spray an 8- or 9-inch round cake pan with baking spray. You could also use butter, but I always have that spray on hand because it's always so handy to have.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar, and salt. Work the shortening in with your fingertips until you don't have any large lumps. Don't get carried away.

Gently stir in the cream, then add the buttermilk until the dough resembles cottage cheese - you might need more or less than 1 cup, depending on the flour you use.

Put the all-purpose flour in a plate, shallow bowl, or pie plate. You don't want to use self-rising flour here, or it will be bitter. Use a medium ice cream scoop (about 2 inches in diameter) start portioning the dough and plopping them into the flour. You can make one at a time, or do 2 or 3, as long as you have space to keep them well separated in the flour.

Sprinkle flour on top of the blobs, then flour your hands and grab a blob and gently shape it into a ball, shaking off extra flour as you go. as you finish each biscuit, place it in the prepared pan, scrunched up next to its neighbors. Continue shaping and placing the biscuits until they're all in the pan.

Bake at 425 degrees until they are lightly browned, about 20-25 minutes. Brush with the melted butter.

Turn the biscuits out onto a plate, then flip again so they're right-side up on another plate. Cut along the seams to separate the biscuits before serving - they don't really pull apart.

*The original recipe calls for 1/4 cup of sugar, but I didn't want them that sweet, so cut back a bit.

About the book: I've cooked a number of recipes from this book, including Fried Eggs with Wine Vinegar, Potato Scallion Cakes, Spiced Red Wine, Caesar Salad Dressing, Chickpea Stew with Saffron, Yogurt, and Garlic, Pasta with Yogurt and Caramelized Onions, Broccoli Cooked Forever, and Gratin of Zucchini, Rice & Onions with Cheese.

Out of all of those, the only one I might not make again is the Chickpea Stew. Or, more accurately, I might make it again, but unlike other recipes that I might tweak a little, I might tweak that one a lot.

Although I like chickpeas, I didn't like them in the soup. But I might make the broth again with something like carrots. Someone else might love it as-is. It wasn't bad in any sense, it just wasn't my taste.

The Fried Eggs with Wine Vinegar tasted really good, and I might add a splash of vinegar to eggs next time I fry them. As the recipe said, the vinegar cuts the richness of the yolks. My only small quibble with the recipe was that the red of the wine vinegar wasn't hugely appealing. Next time, I might use a white wine vinegar, or perhaps just ass a splash of balsamic. But that's not really a critique of the recipe itself. Just a personal quirk.

But hey, don't we all tweak recipes when we make them. The difference about the recipes in this book is that they really are different from other recipes of their sort. I don't think I've ever seen a recipe that suggested putting vinegar on eggs, and for sure I've never seen a biscuit dough as wet as this. The Broccoli Cooked Forever was also way different from usual.

And then there are recipes we're probably familiar with, like Marcella Hazan's tomato sauce and Jim Lahey's no-knead bread. We know them now, but they were certainly unique with the first showed up.

What I'm trying to say is that pretty much every recipe was a winner, and I've got more recipes that I want to make in the book. The book is a real winner.

Yum

Simple cheesy biscuits #WhenWeBake

I love biscuits. Since they don't need to rise, you can have them mixed and in the oven before your coffee is done brewing, which makes them perfect for breakfast or brunch. Dinner, too.

If you keep self-rising flour on-hand, they're even easier. You can buy it or make your own mix to have when you need it.

These biscuits are flavored with shredded cheese. I used a store-bought Mexican mix with both yellow and white cheese, but use what you like. Yellow cheese will show up a little better, but even a white cheese will show on top as it browns in the oven.

I've tried a few recipes using Country Crock Spread lately, but this time I used the sticks. I think I like them better for baking, but I'm still in the experimental stages.

Simple Cheesy Biscuits

2 cups (9 ounces) self-rising flour
1 teaspoon sugar
1 stick (8 tablespoons) Country Crock stick
3/4 cup shredded cheese (I used a Mexican blend), divided
1 cup buttermilk

Heat the oven to 400 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Put the flour and sugar in a medium bowl. Add the Country Crock and cut with a pastry cutter or two knives until you have bits as small as cornmeal and no larger than lentils.

Add 1/2 cup of the cheese and stir to distribute it.

Add the buttermilk and fold it in until there are few dry spots left. It's perfectly fine if there are some powdery places, as long as there aren't giant desserts of dry flour.

Turn the mixture out onto your work surface, and, using a bench scraper and your hands, first pat it down, then fold it over itself. Pat down and fold. After the third or fourth pat-and-fold, you should have a dough that's holding together.

Portion the dough into 8 pieces - you can use a disher to make a more round blob - and place them onto your baking sheet leaving space between them - they will spread a bit. Use your palm to flatten them a bit.

Sprinkle the tops of the biscuits with the remaining cheese.

Place the pan in the oven and bake until the cheese is melted on top and beginning to brown and the biscuits are just starting to brown, about 20 minutes. Remove the biscuits from the pan and place on a rack. Serve warm.

Yum

Honey Yogurt Biscuits

These biscuits have a nice, sweet honey flavor from the yogurt, without being too sweet, so they're perfect for breakfast or for dinner.

If honey isn't your thing, there are are plenty of other yogurt flavors available today that would work really well, so have fun and use something you like.

And biscuit-making doesn't get much easier than this.

I'm serious. You don't need any super-fancy mixing equipment. A bowl and any old spoon or spatula will do. You don't need to cut in any butter. You don't even need a rolling pin.

Okay, it helps if you have a biscuit cutter. And you do need an oven.

But still, this recipe has only three ingredients, and the technique isn't very complicated. In about 20 minutes, you'll have fresh, hot biscuits, ready for a little butter.

Different brands of Greek-style yogurts can vary a little in thickness, so you might need more or less flour during the folding process, but this recipe is very forgiving.

Honey Yogurt Biscuits

3 cups self-rising flour
1 5.3-ounce container honey-flavored Greek-style yogurt
1 cup milk

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Put the flour in a bowl and add the yogurt in the center, and then pour the milk in. Using a spatula or wooden spoon, begin stirring at the center, working the yogurt in first, and continuing to stir until everything is combined.

The dough should be well-mixed, so there's no more dry flour visible, but you shouldn't mix it like crazy. It should be a rough, shaggy wet dough.

Flour your work surface and turn out the dough, Sprinkle a little bit of flour on top of the dough, then use your hands to pat the dough to about 1 inch think. Use a large spatula or a dough scraper to fold the dough in half. It will be loose and sloppy and not very cohesive, but that's fine.

Pat the dough and fold it in half the same way three more times. With each fold, it will become more cohesive.

After the last fold, pat the dough to an evenly-thick rectangle that's slightly larger than 6x9 inches. You don't need to measure it exactly - use a 3-inch biscuit cutter to measure it - you should be able to cut two biscuits in one direction and three in the other direction, with a little bit of dough scrap around the edges.

Cut those six biscuits and arrange them on the baking sheet, just barely touching each other. Gather the dough scraps and form them into a 3x6-inch rectangle and cut two more biscuits and place them on the baking sheet.

Gather the remaining dough scraps - there shouldn't be much left. Form it into a small round biscuit and place it on the baking sheet. This is the perfect sample for the baker.

If you like, brush the tops of the biscuits with milk, cream, or soft butter. Bake at 450 degrees until the biscuits are golden brown on top, about 15 minutes. Remove the biscuits from the pan and let them cool slightly on a rack. Serve warm.

Yum

Cheddar and Ham Biscuits

This post brought to you by Sargento. The content and opinions expressed below are that of Cookistry.

I absolutely LOVE making biscuits. They're like instant bread. And these are super-easy - you don't even need a biscuit cutter! With the holidays coming up, these are perfect for breakfast when you have guests - they'll be amazed that you made your own biscuits.

These would also be great for mini sandwiches or just a little snack.

This post is sponsored by Sargento, and they asked me to create a recipe using one of their shredded cheeses. I chose the fine-cut sharp cheddar from their Off the Block line of cheese, first because of the color. I had been brainstorming ideas, and I decided that a bright, cheery orange cheese would look really good in a recipe.

Once I decided for sure that I was making biscuits, I knew I wanted small bits of cheese rather than larger chunks, so I was pretty happy to find the fine-cut shreds. And of course, cheddar has a lot of flavor. I love all kinds of cheese, but even when I've stocked up on all kinds of fancy stuff, there's usually some kind of cheddar on hand.

Cheddar and Ham Biscuits

2 1/4 cups self-rising flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
2 ounces (1/2 cups) Sargento fine-cut cheddar cheese
3 slices thin-sliced deli ham, diced (1-2 ounces depending on the slices)
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, frozen
1 1/4 cups buttermilk

Heat the oven to 450 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Put the self-rising flour in a bowl and add the salt, sugar, cheese, and ham. Give it a stir to disperse the cheese and ham throughout the flour.

Grate the butter directly into the flour mixture using a coarse grater. The easiest thing to do is to freeze a whole stick of butter, then unwrap and re-wrap the stick so that only 2 tablespoons are left wrapped. That way, you know when to stop grating and you've got a little bit to hang onto as you grate. Just make sure you don't grate the wrapping into the biscuits.

As you grate, stop now and then and mix the butter in so it distributes through the flour before it has a chance to clump together.

Add the buttermilk and stir until the flour is all moistened. If you have dry spots, add more buttermilk, as needed. If it seems wet and a little sloppy, don't worry about it.

Flour your work surface and turn out the dough.Flour the top of the dough as well, just to keep it from being too sticky. Use your hands to pat the dough to form an evenly-thick square about 12 inches square. Fold the dough in thirds, like a letter, then fold in thirds in the other direction to form a fat square.

TIP: You don't need to measure 12 inches exactly. You know how big an 8 1/2 x 11 standard sheet of paper is. Try to make the sides of your dough about the same size as the length of that paper. It will be close enough.

If the dough is still sticky, flour your work surface and the top of the dough again. Pat the dough down to form a 12-inch square again. It doesn't need to be exact. Fold as before.

This time, pat the dough to form a 9-inch square. Again, you don't need to measure precisely - it should be about the width of that imaginary piece of paper. If you want taller biscuits, feel free to stop patting and make a smaller square of thicker dough.

Using the sharpest, longest knife you have (or you can use a rolling pizza cutter if you have one) cut about 1/2 inch off the outer edges of the square. Having a cut edge will help them rise properly. When you cut, don't saw like you're slicing - you want to cut straight down. If the knife is curved, you can rock it so you cut all the way through. Just don't saw.

Now, cut the dough in thirds in one direction, then in thirds in the other direction, like you're cutting a tic-tac-toe pattern that creates 9 square biscuits. Or, if you want smaller biscuits, cut in a 4x4 pattern to make 16 small biscuits.

Arrange the biscuits on the prepared baking sheet. If you leave them very close together - barely touching - they will have soft sides and tend to rise just a little higher. If you spread them a little further apart on the pan, the sides will be more brown and crisp.

Gather up the scraps from the edges you cut off and form them into biscuits of whatever shape you like. Bake until the biscuits are nicely browned, about 15 minutes.

Optional: Before baking, you can brush the tops of the biscuits with butter or milk, or sprinkle a little extra cheese on top. Or, if you don't want to bother with melting butter to brush onto the cold biscuits, bake the biscuits for about 10 minutes, then rub the tops with the remaining nub of butter, then continue baking.

Do you think YOU could create a recipe using a shredded Sargento cheese? They're holding a contest on Facebook where the winner will receive $2,000 toward kitchen supplies and ingredients for the perfect holiday meal, plus a year’s supply of Sargento Shredded Cheese. Just submit an original recipe and photo of a dish featuring a Sargento Shredded Natural Cheese variety, plus an explanation of why using real, fresh-tasting ingredients like Sargento Shredded Natural Cheese matters to you.

Look for Sargento on Facebook to submit your recipe.

Want more cheese? You can also find Sargento on Pinterest.

Yum

Crisp Biscuits from #LodgeCastIronNation

I love biscuits. They're so fast to make, and if you're in a mood, you can add things to them. Like herbs or cheese or spices.

So when I received a biscuit pan from Lodge along with the new cookbook, Lodge Cast Iron Nation, I knew that I wanted to make biscuits.

So I opened the cookbook and Crisp Biscuits was the very first recipe. It was like fate.

I figured I could stop right there.

The recipe calls for baking the biscuits in a 14-inch round baking pan, so if you don't have a biscuit pan like the one I used, it's perfectly fine to use something else.

Usually I bake biscuits on a cookie sheet, so I was really interesting to see how these would turn out.

I really liked the results, and I'm probably going to use this pan for biscuits again and again. The wells are just the right size for 3-inch biscuits - or smaller. It should be interesting baking little cakes in this pan, or yeasted rolls.

Meanwhile, these are the biscuits. I usually make mine a little thicker, but that's a personal preference. Also, the recipe says this makes 6 biscuits, but I only managed to get 5. If you need more biscuits, cut them a little smaller, or make a double batch and you can roll them thicker.

This is the pan I received. Isn't it neat? It's also described as a mini cake pan.
I'll bet I'll find plenty of other uses for it too.

And this is the book:

And that's not ALL. There's a giveaway for you - a cookbook and a Lodge 12-inch cast iron skillet. Because everyone needs a cast iron skillet. (Note: giveaway is over.)

This post is part of a promotion with Virtual Potluck, a really fun blog group I belong to. For my participation, I received a cookbook and the biscuit pan. AND Lodge is also supplying a cookbook and a skillet as a giveaway item for each participating blogger.

The giveaway info is at the end of this post.

Crisp Biscuits
Adapted from Lodge Cast Iron Nation

1 cup (4 1/2 ounces) all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1/4 cup vegetable shortening (I used the butter-flavored version)
1/3 cup buttermilk

Heat the oven to 400 degrees and brush or wipe 6 wells of a Lodge biscuit pan with vegetable oil.

Or another pan, if you don't happen to have the biscuit pan. You could bake these in a cast iron skillet, if you like.

Combine the flour, baking powder, salt, baking soda, and sugar in a medium bowl.

Add the shortening and cut it in with a pastry blender until it's the texture of coarse cornmeal.

Another view of the pan. In case you want to buy one!

Add the buttermilk all at once and stir until it's moistened. You don't want to mix too much.

Flour your work surface and turn out the dough. Roll or pat it to 1/3- to 1/2-inch thick. I rolled mine to 1/3 inch.

Use a 3-inch pastry cutter to cut as many circles and you can (I cut three), and place them in the pan. Gather the scraps, pat to the same thickness, and cut again. I managed one more biscuit, for a total of four. Gather any remaining scraps and form one more biscuit.

Place the pan in the oven and bake until the tops are lightly browned, 15-20 minutes.

Place the pan on a rack and remove the biscuits as soon as you can do so without burning yourself.

Yum

No-Butter Biscuits #PantryInsiders

The nice folks at Pompeian, who have been sponsoring posts on this blog, came up with an interesting theme: Use olive oil in place of butter in a recipe that traditionally uses butter. And try to replace all the butter with oil.

Hmmm. Welllllll. Huh.

The first thing I thought of was corn on the cob. But that's not much of a recipe. I mean, I did think of brushing the corn with oil and then adding other stuff, like herbs or cheese. But it's still not much of a recipe. Tasty idea, though ...

What other recipes traditionally use butter? Recipes where you'd assume there's butter, without even thinking about it?

I probably could have come up with a number of recipes that used just a few teaspoons of butter, but I wanted to come up with a recipe that used a significant amount, because I like to challenge myself, even when it's not required.

And I wanted one more hurdle to jump over. I didn't want to rehash something I made before - I wanted to come up with something new for this post. I made cakes and cookies with oil before, and they worked out really well, so baking sounded like fun.

I decided on biscuits.

Why?

Well, because most biscuit recipes we think about have butter in them. And it's a significant part of the recipe. So changing butter to oil is ... uh ... fat-changing? I guess it could be life-changing, if you're doing it for the diet rather than for the fun of it, right?

And also because I wanted biscuits for dinner. Sometimes it is all about practicality.

I made eight small but tall biscuits, but if you prefer shorter, wider biscuits, just roll the final shape a little larger before cutting.

To help me on my quest, Pompeian sent a bottle of their OlivExtra Premium Mediterranean blend, with canola, olive, and grapeseed oils. The flavor was mild, but pleasant.

So I embarked on this madness. There's still some butterfat in the recipe, since I used milk and yogurt, but there's no solid butter. No butter butter. And you could use nonfat milk and yogurt, if you wanted to.

No-Butter Biscuits

2 cups (9 ounces) all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup Pompeian OlivExtra Premium Mediterranean blend
1/2 cup Greek-style yogurt
1/4 cup milk
1 egg

Heat the oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, salt, and baking powder. Whisk or stir to make sure the paking powder and salt are well-mixed into the flour. Set aside.

In a small bowl (or you can do this in a 2-cup measuring cup), combine the oil, yogurt, milk, and egg. You should have 1 1/4 cups of liquid. If it's a little short, add more milk. If it's a little more (since egg sizes can vary) it's fine. No worries. Whisk this to combine.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix just until all the flour is moistened. If the dough seems dry and it's hard to incorporate all the flour, add a little extra milk, as needed. The dough should be soft rather than dense. If it seems wet or gloppy, that's fine - we can incorporate more flour when folding.

Flour your work surface and turn out the dough. Flour the top of the dough. use a rolling pin to roll the dough approximately 1/2-inch thick, adding flour as needed to keep the dough from sticking to the rolling pin or the counter. Fold the dough in thirds, like a letter.

Roll the dough again to 1/2-inch thick, flouring the dough and work surface as needed. Fold the dough in thirds, as before.

This time, roll the dough to slightly larger than 4 inches by 8 inches and keep the sides as straight as possible. It should be about an inch thick.

Trim the outside edges of the dough to straighten those edges, then cut the dough in half to form two 4-inch squares. I used a pizza cutter to trim the dough, but a sharp knife is fine. Then cut each square into quarters. You should have eight squares total, plus the trimmings.

Arrange the squares on the baking sheet. You can leave them farther apart if you want them crisper around the edges, or place them close together, or even touching, if you want more rise and soft edges.

Bake at 350 degrees until the biscuits are nicely browned, about 25 minutes.

Remove the biscuits from the pan and cool on a rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Pompeian has sponsored this post as part of the Pantry Insiders program.

Yum

Need Self Rising Flour? Mix your own!

Self-rising flour is a handy thing to have on hand if you tend to make a lot of biscuits and quick breads and other recipes that specify self-rising. I happen to like King Arthur's self-rising flour, since it's made from a softer wheat than typical all purpose flour. Unfortunately, it's not always available at my local store.

Bummer.

I buy it online when I'm buying other King Arthur products, but I tend to use it all before it's time to place another order. Oh well ...

The good news is that self-rising flour isn't a magical or complicated product. It's easy to mix it up yourself. Sure, you won't get the benefit of the softer wheat flour, but that's not going to kill a recipe. If I'm not planning on making multiple recipes that require self-rising flour, I mix just enough for a recipe or two.

When I know I'm going to be making a lot of biscuits and similar goods over the next week or so, I mix up larger batches. This stuff doesn't go bad quickly, so you don't need to fret about leftovers that hang around for a few weeks or even a few months.

Want to make some? Here's how:

For a small batch of self-rising flour:

2 cups (9 ounces) all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt

Combine all ingredients and whisk well to distribute the baking powder through the flour. Or, if you prefer, you can sift it together. Store the same way you store your flour.

For a large batch of self rising flour:

1 5-pound bag all purpose flour
1/2 cup baking powder
2 tablespoons salt

Stir or sift the ingredients together well so that the baking powder is evenly distributed in the flour. Store the same way you store your flour.

Yum

Basic Drop Biscuits

The first version of my book proposal included some quick bread and muffin recipes, but after some discussion, it was decided that we'd focus on yeast breads rather than splitting the book between chemically leavened and yeast leavened.

To be honest, I like the current concept better. It's more tightly focused. And you know I love yeast breads. Mmmm. Yeasty.

But I also love muffins, quick breads, biscuits, and all the other baked goods.

Biscuits are like emergency bread. You can make them very quickly ... but ... but ... you can enhance their flavor by letting them hang around for a while. And the texture is different as well. Give this method a try and see what you think!

The easiest biscuits of all, drop biscuits, don’t require any rolling, folding, shaping, or cutting. They aren’t the pretty in the traditional sense, but the hills, valleys, and craters have a rugged beauty all their own.

And the ingredient list is short.

Basic Drop Biscuits
Makes 8 biscuits

2 cups (9 ounces) self rising flour
6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter
3/4 cup milk

Place the flour in a medium bowl. Add the butter and cut with a pastry cutter or two knives until the butter pieces are no larger than small peas. Add the milk, stir to combine, just until all the flour is moistened.

Cover the bowl and refrigerate until morning. Yup, that's what I said. Cover and refrigerate. The flour will hydrate during the long rest and you'll end up with better biscuits. Try it, and let me know what you think.

Or, obviously, you could bake these right away. Your choice.

When you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Using a disher or a large spoon, portion the dough into 8 equal mounds on the baking sheet, leaving space between them. Flatten the biscuits slightly.

Bake the biscuits at 400 degrees until golden brown on top, about 25 minutes. Take the biscuits out of the oven and put on a rack. Serve warm.

Yum

Bacon Biscuits

I love biscuits, and they're so easy to make, once you've figured out the technique. And they're fast. I can whip up a batch of biscuits while I'm waiting for a roast to rest - they're that fast.

I usually opt for smaller, taller biscuits, but this time I opted for wider, thinner biscuits for breakfast sandwiches. And, since I was thinking about breakfast, I added bacon to the biscuits.

These were also great for one of my favorite summer treats - tomato sandwiches. The hint of salty bacon was just right.

Bacon Biscuits

See the flaky layers? That's from folding the dough.

3 cups self-rising flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
3-4 strips of bacon, cooked until crisp, chilled
1 1/2 sticks cold unsalted butter
1 1/4 cups cold milk
Flour for dusting work surface

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Put the self-rising flour and salt in a large bowl. Chop the bacon into very small pieces and add it to the flour. Stir to combine.

Add the butter and cut with 2 knives or a pastry cutter until the butter is in small pieces - about the size of peas.

Add the milk and stir just until all the flour is moistened and the milk is absorbed. At this point, it's a pretty gloppy dough. That's fine.

Generously flour your work surface and turn out the dough, Flour the top of the dough. Roll the dough to approximately 16 inches square (ish). It doesn't need to be square. A vague roundish blob is fine.

Biscuit cutters from Good Cook - 3 sizes, two cutting sides.

Fold the top third of the dough over the middle third. It's good to use a dough scraper for this, since though dough isn't very cohesive at this point. Fold the bottom over the top piece.

Now fold the left and right over the center in the same way. You should have a mostly-square piece of dough.

Flour the work surface again to keep the dough from sticking and flour the top so the rolling pin doesn't stick. You shouldn't need as much flour as the first time.

Roll the dough again to about 16 inches square and fold as before.

Now, roll the dough to about 10 inches square to make 3-inch biscuits. The dough should be about 1/2 inch thick.

Cut nine 3-inch rounds from the biscuits using a biscuit cutter. Place them on the baking sheet, leaving a little space between them.

Tomato sandwich with yogurt cheese on a bacon biscuit.

Gather the scraps together, stacking them so that the horizontal layers you've made stay horizontal. Roll the dough to 1/2-inch thick, in a shape that will let you cut three more rounds.

The remaining dough scraps can be baked for biscuits, but the more you re-roll, the tougher the dough will get. I usually just bake odd-shaped pieces for snacking. If there's room on the same baking sheet, put the scraps there, or put them on a separate sheet to bake.

If you like, you can brush the tops of the biscuits with butter or milk.

Bake at 450 degrees until the biscuits are nicely browned, about 12-15 minutes.

Remove the biscuits from the pan and let them cool on a rack.

Yum

Ice Cream Biscuits - Just two "ingredients"

Yes, I mean to put ingredients in quotes, because the two ingredients are not actually single-ingredient items. But still, when you're mixing this up, you only need two things.

Easy peasy.

This concept came about when someone asked about ice cream bread, which seems to be making the rounds on blogs lately.

I hadn't paid attention to them as they wandered across blogs, but when it was explained that ice cream bread is a quick bread or muffin that's made with ice cream and self-rising flour, my very next thought was "biscuits!!!"

Thanks to Nathalie Dupree's book Southern Biscuits, I knew that biscuits didn't have to be made with butter. I'd made cream biscuits and yogurt biscuits with her recipes.

So, why not ice cream biscuits? Yes, why not, indeed.

So I scurried to the kitchen and whipped up a batch.

I figured they'd be a little bit sweet, so they'd be perfect for the biscuit version of strawberry shortcake.

What surprised me was how high they rose. They also took a little extra longer to bake than normal biscuits because the ice cream was so cold.

They were a little sweet, but not crazy sweet, and they were crunchy on the outside and soft inside. Nice for strawberry shortcake, for sure.

I used a peach ice cream I made recently, because I thought the fruity flavor would be good in the biscuits. Use whatever flavor you like.

Ice Cream Biscuits

1 cup ice cream
2 cups (9 ounces)  self-rising flour
Butter (for the tops of the biscuits - optional)

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Let the ice cream get soft while you're waiting for the oven to heat. It doesn't need to be completely melted, but it shouldn't be chunky, either.

Put the self-rising flour in a bowl and add the ice cream. Stir until all the flour is moistened. If the dough seems dry, add a little milk or cream. If the dough seems too soft, don't worry about it.

Flour your work surface - you can us self-rising flour or all purpose. Turn out the dough and shape it into a rough square. Flour the top of the dough, and roll to about 8x10 inches. You don't need to measure. Eyeball it and imagine something a little smaller than standard sheet of paper.

Fold the dough in thirds, like a letter. Roll again to the same size (use flour as needed to keep the dough from sticking to the counter or the roller) and fold again. Roll and fold one more time.

This time, roll to the dough to about 5x10 inches. Use a 3-inch biscuit cutter to cut three rounds from the dough. I used a fluted cutter, but a regular round one is fine.

Gather the scraps, taking care to keep the layers you've created in the dough horizontal. Roll and cut more biscuits. I got two from this reroll, then gathered and rerolled again to get one last biscuit for a total of six.

Put the biscuits on the baking sheet. Brush with butter (or milk, if you like) and bake at 425 degrees until the biscuits are nicely browned, about 18 minutes, depending on how cold the dough was when it went into the oven.

When the biscuits come out of the oven, you can brush them with a little more butter, if you like.

Let the biscuits cool on a rack.

Yum

Biscuits - a review

If you follow this blog, you probably know that my husband has been in the hospital for a while. As much as I like cooking, I've been pretty lax about cooking anything blog-worthy. Some of the things I've made, I might not even admit to.

I haven't quite resorted to junk food and boxed meals, but there have been a few peanut butter episodes, and one run-in with a brownie mix.

So when a company called Robinhood Meetinghouse emailed me and asked if I wanted to try their frozen biscuits, I thought. "what the heck."

This is what they said, "Robinhood Meetinghouse, from Bath, Maine makes mouth-watering biscuits from a recipe developed over 30 years ago by acclaimed chef Michael Gagne. Chef Gagne uses the French technique of sheeting and laminating the dough, a method that creates a unique airiness and flakiness rarely found in biscuit recipes. The method also allows for the inclusion of a variety of different ingredients, giving our favorite comfort food a culinary make over with flavors like Triple Ginger, Sweet Potato, and Double Chocolate."

Hmmm ... I like laminated biscuits - I make them that way sometimes.

I was sent samples of the Triple Ginger, Sweet Potato, and Cream Cheese varieties. The cream cheese biscuits were sort of a standard biscuit in the sense that they didn't have any additional flavors. And yes, they were flaky, as promised.

To be honest, I was skeptical about the triple ginger, but I really (really really) liked them. They weren't overly sweet or overly spicy. But the ginger flavor made them interesting enough to eat them alone rather than using them as second fiddle to a meal. They didn't even need butter.

The sweet potato biscuits were sweet and sort of Thanksgiving-y. They also seemed just a little more moist than the others - not that the others were dry. These were my least favorite of the three, but I'm sure others would absolutely love them. And it's not that I disliked them - I just liked the other two better.

These biscuits come frozen and they bake directly from frozen in 20-25 minutes. Easy peasy. And they do puff up very nicely - easily double their original height..

The nice thing about these biscuits is that since they're frozen you can store them until you need them, and you can bake as many as you want, whether that's one or two biscuits or a big batch of them.

Disclaimer: I received product at no cost for the purpose of this review.

Yum