Biscuits Supreme

These biscuits are wonderful, light, flaky biscuits that are great split with butter and honey, or as a base for biscuits and gravy, or chicken in gravy, or just about anything else you want to do with them. Since it was a chilly day today we had a crock pot of beef stew going all day and the biscuits would serve well with eggs for breakfast and then repeated with stew for dinner.

Ingredients:

2 cups sifted all purpose flour
4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
2 tsp sugar
1/2 cup shortening
2/3 cup milk


Directions:

Sift the flour, then measure it and sift it again into a large mixing bowl. Sift baking powder, salt, cream of tartar and sugar into flour. I use a mesh strainer for sifting with a wire whisk and it works great. Living on a boat means using a lot of tools for multiple purposes that they weren't necessarily intended for, and the mesh strainer is one prime example.

Cut the shortening into the flour mixture with the wire whisk until it looks like coarse cornmeal.

Add the milk and stir it quickly with a fork until it comes together into a sticky ball.

Turn it out onto a floured surface and knead it just a couple times into a smooth ball. Press the ball flat and into a circle about 10 inches across and about 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick.

Cut it with a biscuit cutter if you have one, or you can use a tuna can with the bottom cut out, or as you see here, a cup with a hole cut in the bottom. Cut as many as you can from the original circle of dough, then knead it together and press it out again and cut some more until you've used all the dough.

I got six very large biscuits out of this recipe. Transfer the biscuits to a parchment lined cookie sheet. Bake at 450° for 10-15 minutes depending on your oven. I have to start mine out on the lower rack setting and halfway through move it to the top rack so the tops will brown. They should be golden brown when done.


These keep well for a day or two if you put them in an airtight ziploc, but truthfully they rarely last that long!