Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Tasty Tuesday: 2nd Best Biscuits in the World


You cannot live in the south and not love biscuits.
Blanketed with butter.
Gently enfolding a slice of ham or a piece of sausage.
Or the ultimate, soaked in cane syrup and served as dessert.

Nobody makes better biscuits than my mama. Hers are the French pastry of biscuits: short, thin, and crispy on the edges.

At 83, my mama rarely makes biscuits anymore. She passed down the secret proportions to me, her younger daughter.

I have no idea what they are. You dump some self-rising flour in a bowl, add several spoonfuls of shortening, add enough buttermilk to make it look right, and mix this concoction with your fingers, gradually smoothing the lumpy shortening and working in the tiniest amount of flour possible to create a solid mass. Bake 'em for about 10 minutes in a super-hot oven, like 475*or 500*.

Got that?

In Married Life BC (Before Children), I made a pan of these delicacies for Big Red every. Saturday. morning. Ah, the days of newlywed bliss.

Then came colic.

Have some cereal, honey.

Until I discovered the 2nd Best Biscuits in the World. Not quite, but almost, as good as Mama's. Almost.

Here's the top secret recipe. Destroy this blog post after memorizing.

2 cups self-rising flour
1 cup heavy whipping cream
That's right. Two ingredients. Two. You can do this.
Stir together. Pat out gently on a floured surface. Cut into biscuits; bake at 475* for 10-12 minutes.

For you unfortunate folks who do not have self-rising flour, a moment of silence on your behalf. I'm sure the internet has about two million listings for how much baking powder and salt you add to plain flour to duplicate self-rising.

I confess. I haven't made Mama's biscuits in a while. I might destroy this blog post after writing, because if Big Red reads it, he will want those biscuits again.

Tonight, 2nd best will have to do. ;-)

This post is linked up with Jen at Beauty and Bedlam.
Blessings,
Ginger

2 comments:

  1. That cracked me up. I called my mom, we had been talking about self-rising flour recently. She has 2 substitutions for it. The first one she said does not work for multiple cups of flour in one recipe (such as 6 cups). We figure the 2d one might work better for multiple cups of self-rising flour.
    The 1st one: 1 Cup All purpose flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp baking soda. THe 2d one: 1 cup all purpose flour, 1 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt. I told her about your recipes. We laughed.

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  2. Your mama biscuits sound delicious! Thanks for sharing :)

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