spleen

the biscuit recipe

I lost this for awhile, but found it again recently. I'm placing it here so I know where it is:

YUMMY FLUFFY BISCUITS

My roommate refers to these as "bomb biscuits."

2 cups flour
4 tsp. double-acting baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) cold butter, cut into cubes
1 egg
2/3 cup half and half (give or take)

Cardinal rule of biscuit making #1: HOT oven, COLD ingredients.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Place an ungreased cookie sheet in the oven.

Combine flour, baking power and salt. Cut butter into flour mixture until the mixture is crumbly (the little butter bits should be pea-sized or smaller). You don't have to be super-quick about this, but you don't want the butter to melt.

Stir in the egg and mix thoroughly. Add about half a cup of the milk. You might have to add more milk to make a good dough - add it sparingly. You want the dough to be malleable and slightly sticky, not dry as bread dough but not pancake batter either. If it gets too sticky, add more flour; too dry, add more milk.

Cardinal rule of biscuit making #2: DON'T knead - "gather" instead.

Turn dough out onto a well-floured surface. Knead the dough by taking it in both hands, drawing your hands apart, then pressing the dough back together. Imagine the dough is an accordian.

Cardinal rule #3: DON'T overwork the dough. Just knead it three or four times until it's uniform.

Roll the dough out until it's about as thick as a box of matches.

Cardinal rule #4: When cutting biscuits, DON'T twist the cutter. Just press it down and enjoy the satisfying pfffft noise the dough makes.

Remove cookie sheet from oven. Cut biscuits with a cutter or a glass (I use a drinking glass). Place biscuits close together on the cookie sheet, but not touching. Bake for 10 or so minutes, or until they're very lightly browned and splitting on the sides.

Cardinal rule #5: Have at least one biscuit IMMEDIATELy, with lots of butter. You made the damned things, and you should have the hottest, lightest, butteriest one.

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nota bene

The somniloquy.org subscription system is being purged of inactive accounts on January 31. Obviously, if you're reading this, you have nothing to worry about - only those accounts that haven't logged in for six months or more will be deleted. However, if you're email address is no longer accurate, please click on the "change email" link to your left and plug in your current email address. I meant to switch the subscription system over to a more secure encryption algorithm this month, but alas.

I'm having piles of trouble with classes and registration. One of the classes I'm registered for overlaps my workshop by half an hour - thus, I'm trying to switch to another class. The class I really wanted is full and has a long waiting list. I'm attending another class this morning with hopes that I'll get in, but if that one's full too, I'll have to attend yet another class after that. If neither of those work out, I'll go rushing back to the elective I had last semester, which was great but nearly worked me to death. Sigh.

So: either I'm in class at 9:30 Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, or I'm in class at 9:30 Wednesday and Thursday and panicked over assignments the rest of the week.

And someone I like very much dropped out of school this semester. She's in and out of hospitals, crippled with panic attacks. And she had just been looking at Berkeley for grad school. I'm worried, and every time I sit down to write her an email, I feel like my mother - self-consciously trying to sound unworried, unmotherly in some way.

It's only the first week of school, and I feel like I need a vacation. There's an art opening downstairs from me tonight, so I suppose I'll have a vacation in the form of whiskey tonight.

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