The Great Biscuit Quest

What is one to do when one wakes up at 7 am on what was supposed to be a very lazy Saturday morning?  Boyfriend is still sound asleep (and is egregiously hogging your pillow might I add) so he’s no help for entertainment.  Staying in bed any longer will touch off a headache for sure.  Your solution?  Tackle an old enemy who has been preying on you for years -- finding the recipe for the Perfect Biscuit.  Perfect details include height, flavor, fluffiness and (for extra credit) ease of creation.

Now, the recipe that follows is NOT the Perfect Biscuit that I have been seeking for years.  Emphatically not!  However, at a certain point one is forced to face the fact that the quest for perfection is a life-long one that needs fuel.  These biscuits, while not quite deserving of capitalization, are scrumptious, and will be the fuel to spur you on to even greater heights of Biscuit.  And perhaps someday, when we are all very lucky, that Perfect Biscuit will come along and sweep us off our feet...the thought brings tears to my eye.

...I should probably just go eat another biscuit.

Basic Biscuits

INGREDIENTS

2 cups of flour
½ teaspoon salt
4 ½ teaspoons of baking power
4 tablespoons butter cut into cubes, +2 tablespoons melted butter
1 cup milk (ye gods, use buttermilk if you can, I’m already regretting not leaving the house just to buy some for these!)

Preheat the oven to 350.  Whisk together the dry ingredients.  Cut in the 4 tablespoons of cubes butter with a pastry cutter or some forks.  Your flour should have little pea sized cubes of butter cut through it by the end of this process.  Make a well in the middle of the mixture and pour in the milk. Stir it in until it forms a ball.

Turn the dough out onto a very lightly floured surface - knead it (not like bread kneading, just gently) until it is a cohesive dough, then flatten it into a rectangle and fold it over itself before patting it out into 1 inch high dough.  This was one of the 2 new tips I employed from the great Internet - supposedly folding it over right before cutting out the biscuits makes them higher.  Cut your biscuits out.  I got 6 great big biscuits from this, you could probably get 10 moderately sized biscuits if you behave more sensibly than me.

Here is another weird Internet Tip that I think actually works.  After cutting out your biscuits, gently squeeze the sides in to make them taller.  Taller dough = taller biscuits.  Brush the biscuits with melted butter (because we are worth it on Saturdays) and bake on a parchment lined pan for 20 minutes.  

Now slather one with jam, slurp down some tea, and get on with whatever life-long quest you require butter-laden fuel for.  Oh, and use the biscuits as lure to get your boyfriend out of bed and reclaim your pillow!