praise the lard and pass the biscuits

being a southern girl, I love homemade biscuits. while I enjoy making biscuits for breakfast on the weekends, I am not an early riser on the weekends (unless I have to go into work), so usually when I made biscuits for breakfast, they usually ended up being ready about lunch time. because of this, mike decided to start making biscuits for breakfast on the weekends. he has since become determined to make the greatest biscuits, tweaking my recipie (which I thought was pretty good) and reading everything that he can find on how to make biscuits. he even read the book called, the rise of the southern biscuit (trust me, I could not make this stuff up!). here is his current version that he makes in a 9" pie plate. it is constantly evolving.

mike’s famous biscuits

2 cups self rising flour (alternative: 2 cups cake – low gluten – flour and 1 tablespoon baking powder; see recipe for caryn’s homemade baking powder below)
1 tablespoon sugar
5 tablespoons cold butter, cut into pieces, plus 3 more melted for brushing
1 cup buttermilk

1. preheat oven to 450°
2. combine sugar and buttermilk, stirring slightly to dissolve.
3. in a large bowl, combine flour and salt. using your fingers, a fork, or pastry blender cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. add buttermilk all at once and stir with a fork or wooden spoon until mixture holds together
4. gather dough into a ball. turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. pat dough into 9” circle and transfer into pie plate
5. using pizza cutter, cut dough into 2” squares. this makes soft biscuits that rise well. you can also roll out dough about ½ inch thick (be careful not to overwork the dough, this will make the biscuits dense) and cut biscuits into 2 ½ inch circles or squares and place on ungreased baking sheet, 1 inch apart for crusty biscuits or closer together for biscuits with soft sides
6. reroll scraps and cut for additional biscuits
7. brush tops of biscuits with ½ of melted butter
8. bake until golden brown, about 12 minutes
9. brush with remaining butter while still warm from the oven and serve immediately

caryn’s homemade baking powder

this may seem a little extreme, but mike’s hates the metallic taste of store-bought baking powder, so I make this to keep him happy and more importantly baking wonderful biscuits. this will keep for about 6 weeks.

¼ cup cream of tartar (use bakewell cream if you can find it)
2 tablespoons baking soda

1.sift together cream of tartar and baking soda 3 times
2.transfer to a clean dry jar and seal tightly