Mel Makes & Bakes: Baking Powder Biscuits

This is a recipe for anyone who thinks that baked goods from scratch are too much work or take too long. I have personally never been a big fan of those dinner rolls from the grocery store bakery, or those so-called biscuits that come in the exploding tube... but light, fluffy biscuits warm out of the oven? I'll take that every time. What's that you say? They're ready, start to finish, in less than 30 minutes? And all you need is a bowl, a spoon, and a floured surface?

Let's get started.

Baking Powder Biscuits

From: Grandma Esther

Makes 12

You'll need:
1 3/4 c flour, plus more for dusting
1 T sugar
2 1/2 t baking powder
3/4 t salt
3/4 c milk
1/3 c vegetable or canola oil

Mix together the dry ingredients, then stir in the milk and oil. You'll have a thick, sticky dough. I dare you not to eat some... Whenever I make biscuits, every single member of my family troops into the kitchen for a bite. It's that good.

Turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface and knead lightly 10 times, adding flour to the dough and work surface as needed. If you like uniformly-shaped biscuits, try to get the dough into a roughly rectangular shape near the end of the kneading.

Useful tip: if you scatter a thin layer of flour over the dough before folding it over that tenth time, your biscuits will split apart in the middle perfectly.

Smush the edges together and push and pull until it's a rectangle (if you care), and cut the dough into 12 even pieces. Place on an uncreased cookie sheet. Don't worry if they're close together; they'll expand upward, not outward.