Tag Archives: home made

Recipe: Fluffy Biscuits

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Biscuits rising but not yet browned in the oven. YUM!

Biscuits rising but not yet browned in the oven. YUM!

I’ve tried a number of biscuit recipes in my search for THE recipe.  It took some tweaking, but I finally have a recipe worthy of being the go-to recipe whenever biscuits are on the menu.   The results have been consistently good, so if you’re wanting to take the plunge into making homemade biscuits, this is a recipe I can vouch for.

 

 

 

Fluffy Biscuit Recipe

2 cups all purpose flour

3 1/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp sugar

5 1/2 TBS butter, cold, cut into small pieces*

approx. 1 cup buttermilk**

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Measure dry ingredients and mix them in a bowl.  Using a pastry blender or a fork, cut thecuttinginbutterlogo pieces of butter into the dry ingredients.  You should have a pebbly texture with visible chunks of butter.  Add enough buttermilk to make a dough that holds together but is not too sticky (amount of buttermilk may vary slightly depending on the flour you use as well as humidity in your kitchen).

Roll out dough to desired thickness (I prefer at least 1/2 inch thick) – use a dusting of flour if needed to keep dough from sticking to counter.  Cut out biscuits to desired size (photos show biscuits cut out with a wide-mouth Mason jar, which is about the size of store bought Grands biscuits).

Place biscuits on a lightly greased baking sheet.  Bake at 400 degrees for approximately 10 minutes, until biscuits have risen and are the desired shade of golden brown.

Brushing the tops of the biscuits with melted butter before and after baking makes them extra tasty.

*To get a stick of butter into small pieces, cut off the 5 1/2 TBS from the stick, unwrap it and put it on a plate standing tall.  Slice it into 3-4 slices.    Put the slices back together and turn the butter rectangle onto its side, cut another 3-4 slices long ways in the butter.  Finally, cut across the rectangular slices to get small pieces of butter.  Make sure to keep the butter cold – put it back in the refrigerator for a few minutes before adding to the dry ingredients if your kitchen is warm and the butter softened while you were cutting it up.  Use your fingers to separate the pieces of butter as you put them into the bowl.

 

You can substitute 5 1/2 TBS beef tallow or 1/3 cup vegetable shortening in place of the butter if desired.  I highly recommend brushing the biscuits with melted butter before and after baking if using beef tallow or shortening. 

 

**Don’t have buttermilk?  Put 1 TBS of white vinegar or lemon juice into a measuring cup and add regular milk to make 1 cup.  Mix and let it sit in the refrigerator to stay cold while you are mixing the other ingredients.  The vinegar/lemon juice will sour and thicken the milk.  You need to use soured milk/buttermilk for this recipe not only for taste, but also for the chemical reaction between the buttermilk and the baking powder & soda to get a good rise in the biscuits.  Buttermilk info link

 

Posted in Bread, Food

Vintage Recipe – Lemon Ice Cream

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Lemon Ice Cream - look close to see the small yellow bits of lemon rind.

Lemon Ice Cream – look close to see the small yellow bits of lemon rind.

According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, today is supposed to be the last day of the “dog days of summer”.  Apparently the weather in Texas does not subscribe to that kind of folk lore since we’ll still be roasting well into September.  At least.  But when it’s really hot, that just means homemade ice cream tastes even better.

Here’s another vintage “receipt” that we tried out.  It is a “Philadelphia” ice cream, made without eggs.  It’s a bit different from what we’re used to, since these days lemon and citrus flavors are usually seen in sherbets and ices – not dairy based ice creams.  But it was nicely flavored and the cream gave a little hint of a buttery taste.

Lemon Ice Cream

1 quart of cream (I used whipping cream in lieu of fresh cow’s cream)

9 ounces (by weight) of powdered sugar

4 tablespoonfuls of lemon juice

Juice of one orange

Grated yellow rind of 3 lemons (I used a lemon zester to peel off the yellow rind and then chopped the rind fine)

Mix the sugar, the grated rind and juice of the lemons, and the orange juice together.

Put half the cream in a double boiler over the fire; when scalding hot, stand it aside until perfectly cold; add the remaining half of the cream and freeze it rather hard.

Remove the crank and the lid, add the sugar mixture, replace the lid and crank, and turn rapidly for five minutes; repack to ripen.

This will serve six people.

Recipe from Ice Creams, Water Ices, Frozen Puddings, Together with Refreshments for all Social Affairs by Mrs. S. T. Rorer, Arnold and Company, Philadelphia, 1913  

**In the foreword of this cookbook, there are some tips and “general directions for all recipes”.  There is discussion of what to do if cream cannot be purchased but I chose to use readily available whipping cream.  But for those that would like to try the instructions given for when “cream” is not available – here they are:

“In places where neither cream nor condensed milk can be purchased, a fair ice cream is made by adding two tablespoonfuls of olive oil to each quart of milk.  The cream for Philadelphia Ice Cream should be rather rich, but not double cream.”

If you decide to make your own “cream”, I would recommend that you do NOT use extra virgin olive oil.  I would recommend one of the olive oils labeled “light” or “light tasting”, or maybe even one of the new butter flavored oils.  Regular extra virgin olive oil usually has a taste that is too heavy for putting into things like this.  Or homemade mayonnaise.  Yes, I know this from experience. 🙂

For info on types of cream and exactly what is “double cream” versus “cream” check out this informative link on types of cream.

 

Posted in Desserts, Farm Life, Food