Busy-Day Biscuits

I've mentioned these biscuits in posts before and have been asked to provide a recipe and how-to. So, since I made some to go with dinner tonight, I thought this would be a good opportunity to share.

biscuits split and spread with pumpkin butter

This method for making biscuits is about the quickest I can do with scratch baking. Both my ingredient list and method are simplified in order to get the biscuits into the oven as quickly as possible. It takes 5 minutes, tops, to mix the dough and get these onto a baking sheet. No cutting in shortening, no rolling and cutting out dough. Just simply mix and drop the dough.

dry ingredients dumped into bowl

Ingredients:

2 cups flour (I use 2/3 cup whole wheat + 1 1/3 cup all-purpose)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup fat in liquid form (more on that below)
1 cup milk

bacon fat from the freezer, about 3 T.

For the fat, you can use liquid oil or solid fat, such as coconut oil, butter, shortening, or rendered meat fat such as bacon fat. 

If using a solid fat, melt it in the microwave before adding to the dry ingredients. In this batch, I used part bacon fat and part vegetable oil. I melted the bacon fat in the microwave, then added oil to the 1/4 cup line on the measuring cup.

melted bacon fat

I topped off the bacon fat with vegetable oil to the 1/4 cup line

How to:

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Lightly grease a baking sheet. 

Measure the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl. Use your mixing spoon to stir up these ingredients before adding anything else. This should take 30 seconds or so. 

Pour the liquid fat over the dry ingredients and stir in until there are clumps of fat-soaked flour throughout. Pour the milk over all and stir together to form a stiff dough.

Drop by large spoonfuls onto baking sheet. Don't fuss with the dough too much. I scoop it by spoonfuls, then use a rubber spatula to turn the spoonful of dough out onto the baking sheet.

Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, until lightly browned. Time will depend on the size of each biscuit (my batch made 10). The degree of browning will depend on whether or not you substitute whole wheat flour for some of the all-purpose. More whole wheat flour will result in less browning, but they're still fully baked.

I often make a half-batch and bake on a small baking sheet. A half-batch is about right for one meal for my family of 4. Tonight I baked a whole batch so we could enjoy these with breakfast in the morning.

split hot biscuits and spread with favorite topping

I typically get these into the oven just before I set the table, toss the salad, fill the water pitcher, and dish up the rest of dinner. They come out of the oven piping hot as we're finished saying grace. Our oven is 4 feet from the table. So, cracking the oven door open after baking warms us up on chilly fall and winter evenings.

There you go -- how I make scratch biscuits the quick and easy way. Do you make drop biscuits?

No-Egg, No-Butter, No-Milk Snack Cake (Pumpkin and Other Variations)

I had a busy day in the kitchen today. I was processing some garden produce and baking bread. While I had the oven hot, I also thought I'd bake a quick and easy autumnal cake for my family to enjoy this October week. I made the Pumpkin Spice variation of this snack cake. 

I've shared this recipe before, but it's such a great one to have in your back pocket, I wanted to share it )or the link to it), once again. It takes no eggs, no butter, and no milk. Plus it mixes right in the baking pan, so there's less to wash up afterward. Both eggs and butter are expensive for me right now. So this cake is not only an easy dessert, but a budget-stretching one as well.

Sometimes I frost these cakes. Other times, like tonight, I serve it in squares unfrosted. Since I know my family members will snack on this cake tomorrow or have some with breakfast, I made it a little healthier. I substituted 2/3 cup of whole wheat flour for some of the white flour in the batter. So it has some whole grain, plus some pumpkin. That should give it some health-points.

Anyway, I wanted to bring this recipe to the front of minds now that it's pumpkin and apple season (you can make this cake with applesauce in place of pumpkin). I'll add that for the pumpkin variation, I use 1 teaspoon of any of the fall spices, not just allspice. For today's cake, I used a combination of cinnamon, ginger and cloves totaling 1 teaspoon. 

Enjoy!