Sunday Morning Biscuits

The morning I learned that my grandmother had passed away, I emailed my cousin Katie and asked if she would send me grandma’s famous biscuit recipe. I had it, written in grandma’s shakey handwriting on a notecard, but with so many moves in the past few years I couldn’t seem to put my hands on it.

Katie’s reply was along the lines of a lot of recipes in my family with no precise measurements. So much of our cooking and baking is done from memory, sight, and feel. I have always cooked this way and it’s the main reason I don’t share a lot of recipes on my blog. I’m not precise about anything - I just do a pinch of this, a scoop of that and cook it until I know its done.

The morning of grandma’s funeral, I baked her biscuits and served them to my family on the delicate, rose printed china she had handed down to me when I got married. It was just a small thing I wanted to do in her honor.

Since that day two weeks ago, I have made her biscuits four more times, learning to do it by heart and feel just like my grandmother always did. I’ve been tweaking her recipe some to make it a little healthier and I wanted to share it here. I tried to measure things out so that I could share it here, but don’t be afraid to make your own adjustments. This recipe is very simple but evokes all the warm, loving, comfort-food related memories of my childhood.

Ingredients:

4 cups of self rising flour

1/2 cup of coconut oil (grandma’s recipe called for crisco, but I wanted something a little lighter and the results were delicious!)

2 cups of buttermilk

Preheat oven to 425*F . Sift the flour into a large bowl. I don’t currently own a crank sifter, so I just used a colander and a wooden spoon to sift, like this:

(A tip from a reader: a remedy for no-sifter-ness that may be a little less messy than my verions is to use a whisk on the flour to “lift” it a little. Thanks Stickyheel5)

Before adding the coconut oil to the flour, use the back of a spoon to mash the coconut oil into a paste and remove any hard clumps.

Add the coconut oil to the flour and mix with a chopper like I have pictured here. This one was handed down to me, but if you didn’t have one, a plastic cup with an air hole punctured through it would probably do the trick. 

Continue to combine the two ingredients together with the chopper until the texture becomes piecey. My cousin Katie described it as similar to “mealy grits” but unless you are from the south, you probably have no idea what that means. I can think of no better way to describe it than she did, so I included a photo for reference:

Make a hole in the middle of the flour mixture and slowly fill with buttermilk. With a large spoon, combine ingredients until they form a dough. Add a little more flour or milk as necessary to achieve a dough consistency.

Flour a flat surface and roll out your dough to about a half inch thickness. I use my chopper to cut out the biscuits, but again, a cup with a hole punctured in the bottom of it will suffice.

One thing my grandma always made for us were “funny biscuits” where she would take the last remaining pieces of dough after all the rounds were cut, and clump them into little piles on the baking sheet. These lumpy, odd shaped biscuits used to delight us as children -and we always ate them first. I learned at her funeral that she actually adopted this tradition from her mother in law, so  making them for my children means there are at least three generations of my family who have grown up with funny biscuits.

Place biscuits about a half an inch a part on a non-greased baking sheet or baking stone and place in oven. And here’s the part that you’re going  to have to “eye ball it” as we say in our family. They will need to bake for for 5 to 10 minutes. I have a hard time getting the tops to brown (A reader shared with me it’s because of the coconut oil), so I use a spatula to check the underside of a biscuit - when it’s golden brown, it’s almost done.

My favorite addition to grandma’s recipe is brushing the tops with a mixture of melted butter combined with either maple syrup or honey. It helps brown up the tops and the faint sweetness pairs so nicely with the hint of coconut in the biscuit.

(note the “funny biscuits” in the middle of the tray)

Let bake for another minute or so to caramelize the butter/honey mixture, then remove from oven and transfer to a basket where you can wrap them in a cloth to keep warm. The time in the oven keeps the top mixture from being sticky, so it’s fine to pile them on top of one another.

I love to serve mine with butter and jam, sharp cheddar cheese, or a thin slice of salt-cured country ham.

These biscuits are quick and easy to make and can keep for about a day on the counter (pop in the microwave for 10 seconds to warm them up!) I grew up on these biscuits and it makes me happy to know that my children will too.  We’ve deemed them our new Sunday morning tradition!

Love,

M