Andrew Jorgensen
It's better than bad, it's good!

Calendar Biscuits

The credit for most of this goes to my older brother Eric. The remainder of the credit goes to an old calendar with a picture of a Chicken on the month that had the original source of this recipe. I'll post a scan of the original recipe if I can find it.

Oven 450°

2 Cup All Purpose Flour 2 tsp Sugar 1 tsp Salt 4 tsp Baking Powder (aluminum-free?) ½ tsp Cream of Tartar 6 Tbsp Butter 1 Cup Milk

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. Cut in butter. Pour in milk and mix until nothing is dry, try not to kneed the dough too much. Flatten and fold the dough in thirds 3 or so times. Cut into desired portions. I generally try to get 8 square biscuits out of a batch. Bake for 10-12 minutes at 450° or until golden brown.

Rebecca is pretty sure extra Cream of Tartar is what makes these biscuits especially good.

Eric taught me a good trick for cutting in the butter: Use frozen butter and grate it with a medium-sized cheese grater. This allows you to easily mix the butter into the dry mix and improves the flakiness of the biscuits. 6 Tbsp is ¾ of a stick, so this works pretty well. The grated frozen butter trick also helps the mixing go easier.

It helps to have some flour on the table and on your hands (or rolling pin) so the dough doesn't stick. Basically the more you kneed the dough the more bready (and less flaky) the biscuits will be so try not to work it too much.

Sometimes I use the remaining ¼ stick of butter to baste the biscuits. I also never bake without parchment paper. It makes cleanup a lot easier and I think it improves the quality of the biscuits.