Tea Leaves

Peter's Famous Biscuits

These are not my famous biscuits. This is a recipe I found in Peter Christian's cookbook, named for a tavern that we used to frequent when we lived in New Hampshire. Use them for sweet or savory dishes. But don't eat too many.

Here is what you do.

1. Put 2 1/2 cups of flour in a bowl. Add a bit of salt, a little sugar (for dessert biscuits) and 1 1/2 TBL of baking powder.

2. Cut 2 sticks of butter into small cubes. Add to the flour then cut it into the flour with a pastry blender or whatever. When it's ready, the flour mixture should have turned into little balls about the size of a small pebble. This means the flour and butter have mixed well.

3. Measure out slightly more than 1 cup of light cream, or 1 cup of millk. It's better with cream. Add most of the cream or milk to the flour mixture. Mix with a fork. If it is too dry, add the rest. You want everything to stick together.

4. Roll the mixture out onto a floured board. Gather up the mixture and make it into a big ball. Don't work it too much, just enough so it all holds together.

5. Roll the dough out so it is about 1/2" thick. Cut circular biscuit pieces about 2" in diameter out of the dough with a glass or other circular thing of the right size. Or make them as big as you want. When you run out of space, roll it all up and do it over again until you are out of dough.

Put all the biscuits on a floured and oiled half-sheet. Or use on of those new-fangled SilPat things. Bake at 400F for 10-15 minutes until the biscuits are light brown on the outside.

You should get about 12-16 biscuits. This means that each biscuit has about 1 tablespoon of butter and 1 tablespoon of cream in it. Keep that in mind while you eat them.