I love biscuits. Unfortunately I have never mastered the art of cooking them. My daughter Cathy has and cooks little biscuits that really do melt in your mouth. They’re about the size of a silver dollar and stand approximately one to one-and-one-half inches high. They’re always delicately browned on the top and light as a feather. I know that’s a much used phrase but if the shoe fits I don’t care. I saw a recipe once named “Angel Biscuits” and thought, “that must be the one she uses”. I could visualize little angels sitting there on top of her sugar canister waiting for the pan to come out of the oven, breaking them in half, and plopping them in their tiny little mouths. Mine are quite different. They have a top and a bottom but no innards. Willis, my husband, once referred to them lovingly as “Bird Killers.” He had a point there. He loved birds and had bird feeders placed around our yard to feed them in the winter so they wouldn’t starve. When he crumbled my left over biscuits and spread them around the feeder the birds avoided them like the plague.
When I asked Cathy if she used the Angel Biscuit recipe she said, “No, Mother, you use yeast when you make Angel Biscuits. I’ll send you a copy of my recipe”. She did and I decided to try it the very next day. When I took them from the oven I thought maybe she might have given me the wrong recipe. I should have known better. I called and asked which brand of flour, milk, and shortening she used. There are only three ingredients. Surely I could master that. I dumped my bag of Red Band and bought White Lily Self Rising flour. Since I always use Crisco I was safe there, and she said the brand of buttermilk didn’t matter so I stuck with Morning Fresh, my favorite. I was ready now. It must have been the flour that I used previously that caused the failure.
The following day I tried again. I mixed, rolled, cut, and put them in the oven to bake. I was proud of the way they looked. Pretty little suckers that I was sure would be a winner. While in the oven, there was a metamorphic transformation into something I readily recognized. Bird Killers!
Over the years I’ve grown accustomed to my biscuits but still strive to improve their quality. I like to think that I'm a reasonably intelligent person who can follow directions to the letter. I still follow Cathy’s recipe, still use the same brands and measure as carefully as one can. Once in a while the results are pretty good, not great mind you, but pretty good. We can at least eat them. They work well for Bread Pudding, Toppings for Chicken Pot Pie, or Plain Old Cheese Biscuits or Toast that I reheat in our little Black & Decker toaster oven. The birds still won’t eat them, but we do.
