Sunday Muffins: Whole wheat biscuits

Happy Sunday!

The past two weeks have been super busy with finals, working the Oregon Truffle Festival, and enjoying some sunny days outside. I'm not sure why, but the last few weekends in Portland have been beautiful - crisp, clear, sunny days - the perfect days for walks outside and afternoons spent in my porch swing with Matt. Now that things have settled down a bit I am looking forward to get back into blogging.

As part of the second term of school we had a week entirely on baking, on the first day we learned how to make biscuits. Growing up I always thought biscuits were really hard to make - something that my grandmother was able to make perfectly but any time my mom tried to make them they turned out like hockey pucks. You probably think I'm kidding, but I'm not - like they were so hard that my mom probably could have used them during her sunday hockey games. So biscuits were something that I remember only having at my grandmother's house on warm summer nights as the base of strawberry shortcake or with molasses and butter (it's a Maine thing). But after making them at school I have realized that they are super easy to make as long as you follow a good recipe and don't add too much liquid or play with the dough so much that gluten forms - causing them to become hockey puck like.

I normally make them without sugar if I am eating them with something savory such as dinner or with gravy but since Matt and I were having butter, compote, and cream on them I decided to make them slightly sweet. Normally I would never have compote and whipped cream on a breakfast item but Matt and I went to Tasty n Sons last weekend for brunch and had warm biscuits with blueberry compote and whipped cream - so, if they consider it a breakfast item thats good enough for me!

Biscuits (makes 5 three-inch biscuits)
1 tbs sugar (optional)
1/2 tbs baking powder
12 oz flour (I used a mix of white and whole wheat)
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup milk
4 oz cold butter

Start off by adding all of the dry ingredients to a mixing bowl. Mix the ingredients.

Now the secret to great biscuits - use a cheese grater to grate the butter into the flour mixture. To avoid having the butter melt in your hands dip the cold butter into the dry ingredient mixture which will provide a barrier between the butter and your hands. Now work the butter into the dry ingredients (it's way easier to use your hands for this part) until the mixture looks like a bowl of crumbs.

 Now slowly start adding the milk. You probably wont have to add all of it so just add enough so a dough forms. It's okay if parts of it look slightly dry - the butter will melt in the oven.

 Turn out the dough onto the table and press it into a slab that it about 3/4" thick. Cut the dough into the desired shape.

 Place them onto a sheet pan lined with parchement paper and brush milk on the tops. I sprinkled some sugar on the tops too! Bake at 400˚F for ~20 minutes (until the tops are golden).

Enjoy!
-xxC