A favorite with many whom I've fed over the past decade. The basic recipe is from Julia Child's Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom. I've made it hundreds of times with many variations inspired by notes and recipes by Elizabeth David, Laurie Colwin and Kim Boyce. This is a very forgiving recipe… I've varied the ratio of flour, liquid and fat by as much as 25% and have gotten very good results. The original recipe is below with variations following the instructions.
2 cups flour: 1 1/2 cups all purpose + 1/2 cup cake or 2 cups pastry
1 2/3 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar: granulated
3/4 cup: shortening
1 cup liquid: milk
Sift together flour, baking powder, salt and sugar.
In a large bowl, work shortening into flour until rough meal (do this by cutting with knives or rubbing with fingers). Add milk and with a spatula, fold milk into the flour mix until combined but take care to not overwork the resulting dough. Turn mixture out onto a floured surface and pat out (or roll with a rolling pin) dough to about 1/2 inch thick (sprinkle top with flour if too sticky). Fold into thirds like a letter and repeat. Pat/roll out to about 3/4 inch thick. Cut 2 1/2 inch biscuits with a cookie cutter. Press together dough remnants, pat out, fold once and cut as above. Space 1 inch apart on a greased and flour baking sheet and bake at 425 degrees for 15-20 minutes until lightly browned.
variations…
flour: use up to 1 1/2 cups barley or oat flour; try white whole wheat flour (available from King Author); add 1 heaping tablespoons of raw wheat germ. I still need to try adding 1-2 tablespoons almond meal.
baking powder: the amount Julia Child recommends is a bit on the high side; I use one heaping tablespoon for a double recipe.
sugar: for a sweeter biscuit, add up to 1/3 cup sugar; can use brown sugar and other less refined sugars and although I have not tried more fluid sugars such as honey or maple syrup, there's no reason they should not work (see below for more information). I prefer to eat my biscuits with honey so I don't add it to the dough.
shortening: can replace with butter or combined with some portion of cream cheese.
liquid: this is where the greatest variation can occur… I have used many combinations of the following: water, soy milk, almond milk, cow's milk of all fat levels, yogurt, buttermilk, cream (any fluid dairy product I might have; a great way to use up leftovers), homemade marmalade, homemade raspberry jam, eggs and apricot puree*. Just vary the amount of liquid to achieve the proper dough consistency. When marmalade or jam is used, take care to not add too much sugar. Honey and/or maple syrup can be incorporated into the dough as part of the liquid component also. I once used some leftover sweetened cream cheese/whip cream topping (great for fruit tart base or dessert topping)… yummy!
Note: To make scones, add 1/4-1/3 cup sugar and replace some of the liquid with 2 lightly beaten eggs. Other additives: 1/2 cup dried fruit (raisins, dried cranberries; dried kumquats are my favorite); mini-chocolate chips; 1/2 tablespoon grated orange/lemon zest.
Apricot puree* can be made by placing ~4-6 oz. dried unsulphured apricots into a oven safe crock. Add water to cover and cover crock. Bake at low temperature (~300 degrees) for 1-2 hours. When cool enough to handle, mash with spoon for apricot puree.
Biscuits can be served with honey, jam/marmalade or used for strawberry shortcake (or other fresh fruit shortcake). A new one for me is flavored cream cheese [beat 8 oz cream cheese with homemade kumquat/orange/Clementine marmalade to taste (start with 2-3 heaping tablespoons)].
Shortcake… mix 2-4 cups of cut up fruit with a squeeze of lemon juice (or a spoonful of balsamic vinegar) and a few tablespoons of sugar. Rest at room temperature for about 30 minutes to extract the juice. Spoon fruit mix over split the biscuits and top with sweetened whipped cream (or try sweetened cream cheese/whip cream).
post script… Making these biscuits is how I learned to make pie dough. When first started, I would use the flour mix to generously coat the (cold) shortening or butter as I held it in one hand while cutting it with a butter knife in the other hand. I would continue this until the little coated balls of butter were the size of peas. Over time, it became faster to cut the butter into larger chunks and rubbing it into the flour by hand. To make pie dough, find a good recipe and handle the ingredients as described, chill dough, roll and fit to pie dish.
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