Biscuits

As a prize for all you who voted, or, since I can't enforce that at all, just because I feel like it, I decided to divulge the best biscuit recipe in the world. It's one of three recipes for biscuits I have from my great granma, Mama Christine, none of them too healthy since she was used to feeding farmers. Even better, it doesn't require rolling out and cutting dough — too much work no matter how good the biscuits.

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 T baking powder
1.5 t salt
4 T vegetable shortening
2/3 cup cream
1 cup buttermilk
flour for shaping

Preheat oven to 425° and grease a round cake pan. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl, then work in the shortening with your fingers until there are no large lumps. This is what will form the nice layers in the biscuits.

Add the cream and the buttermilk, stirring until it looks like cottage cheese. In other words, a lumpy liquidy mess. Here's what a double batch looks like at this point:

Put about a cup of flour in another bowl. Drop a spoonful of dough into the bowl and cover it in flour. Pick up the dough ball and toss it gently from hand to hand to remove the excess flour, then plop it into the greased pan. Repeat until the dough's gone and you've dusted your whole kitchen with flour.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the tops are golden, and enjoy with a nice soup or breakfast.

Yes, they do kinda rise all on top of one another in the cake pan, so don't fuss about spacing them out nicely or anything. I think they would ooze too flat on a sheet pan. Yes, they're so good because of all the shortening, but you know, it could be worse — the recipe actually calls for pouring melted butter on top of them once they come out of the oven. Unnecessary.