As a southern lady and wife, I feel like sometime in my life I need to perfect the art of biscuits and gravy. I am a hopeless, hopeless failure when it comes to gravy - I have tried a few times and watched women in my family make it, and I just can't get it. One time, I tried to make breakfast for dinner and made biscuits and gravy. Andy took one bite and immediately went to pick some dinner up for us. Eek!
In any case, I decided to try to make biscuits from scratch for the first time (but NOT gravy - I couldn't handle it if BOTH items failed!) and it worked! It actually worked!
I have limited baking supplies at home, so I had to find a recipe that called for ingredients I had on hand.
I went with this Baking Powder Biscuits recipe from AllRecipes.com.
All you need is:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup shortening
1 egg
2/3 cup milk
*insert record screech here* Cream of tartar? What the heck is cream of tartar? I googled and discovered it activated baking powder in recipes... but this recipe didn't call for baking soda, it called for baking powder! Hmm. I googled some more and saw that it is basically an acidic ingredient and one can substitute vinegar or lemon juice for cream of tartar, so I pulled out my jug of vinegar and substituted away!
It was easy - you just mix the dry ingredients, cut in the shortening, then beat the milk and egg together and add it in. Roll it out, cut out your biscuits, then bake for 10-12 minutes at 450 degrees and voila! Homemade biscuits!
You'll notice that my biscuits are 2 different shades. I baked a 2nd batch while we ate the first batch and I forgot to set the timer so they turned out pretty dark - but I taste-tested one and it was actually pretty good! It kinda tasted like a cracker biscuit, if you can imagine that! I like crackers, so I thought it was ok, but you'll probably want to keep a better eye on your biscuits while they bake!
Enjoy!!
