Dream Biscuits

I confess.  In 71 years I have never made a really light, flakey biscuit.  At least not until I watched a recent edition of America’s Test Kitchen on PBS.  Man, why have I been struggling so much.

My prior recipes came from The Joy of Cooking — various iterations of the rolled, cream, drop, and whatever other sorts there may be that I have since forgotten about.  I gave due care to not mixing too much, to temperatures of ingredients, etc., and still I always ended up with tasty but heavy biscuits.

America’s Test Kitchens came up with this new recipe that breaks a lot of the rules but it works.  It works wonderfully.  The biscuits I get out of this recipe are literally as light and fluffy as ANY biscuit I have eaten in my life.

Preheat your oven BEFORE you even begin this recipe.  It’s so fast your oven will never reach temperature if you wait until you start to turn on the oven.

Ingredients.

• 3 CUPS FLOUR
• 4 tsp sugar (not for sweetness, but for browning)
• 1 T baking powder (all the lift comes from this)
• 1/4 tsp baking soda (for flavor, not for lift)
• 1 1/4 tsp salt

Those are all the dry ingredients.  Put them in a bowl, whisk them around.

Next comes the unexpected part.  If you were to use milk or buttermilk along with butter, (chilled or not) you’d find that the dough comes out a bit dry. Instead of butter or oil, we are going to do something different.

Measure out:

• 500 ml cream or roughly 2 cups of HEAVY CREAM.  Do not skimp.  Use the real 36% fat kind that you make whipped cream with.

Then microwave the cream long enough to reach a liquid temperature of 95º-100º.  The timing here will depend on the wattage of your microwave.  The people on the TV show only had to set it for 15-30 seconds.  In our tiny, underpowered microwave I needed 75 seconds.  But use a thermometer to test for temperature.  Aim for  95º – 100º degrees.

Stir in the cream until the dough is thoroughly mixed.  Using this technique brevity is not an issue.

Use a 1/2 cup measure.  Spray it lightly with cooking oil spray.  Measure out 1/2 cup dollops of dough onto a baking sheet.  This recipe makes about 10 biscuits.

• Put the tray in the oven at 450 º for  10 – 12 min

Let them cool about 5 minutes and if you want paint them with a little melted butter for color and sheen just before serving.

I will never again make biscuits any other way.  Simple, light, fluffy, tasty, they really are dream biscuits.