Hiphopsideproject

Last weekend was our Cajun/Creole/Deep-South cook-off. We were in the kitchen from 9am until 5pm when our family arrived to consume our creations. The menu ran like this:

• Popcorn Shrimp
• Crab Bisque served with baking powder biscuits
• Cornbread
• Jambalaya (shrimp)
• Gumbo (chicken and sausage)
• Macaroni Cheese
• Red Velvet cake
• Beignets

So while I work through the glut of photos I took during the day I thought I ‘d write up one of the easier recipes, the baking powder biscuits!

If you clicked on the link in the list above and read the wiki article you’ll see that they’re very similar to the English savoury scone (I pronounce it sk-own, by the way!). The main difference that I can see is that instead of using self raising flour as in the scone you use all-purpose (plain) flour and baking powder instead. This isn’t really a big difference, and I guess they’d work well using self raising too. The recipe is simple, and quite relaxing to make. Infact, I was just trying to get the recipe right and I wasn’t entirely happy with the one I made last week, so I whipped some more up just to get the quantities better. These turned out perfect :)

You’ll need:
300g plain flour
3tsp baking powder
60g butter/lard (go for the butter if it grosses you out! but lard is also an option, I used a mix of both because I ran out of butter and had some lard in the fridge from seasoning our new wok)
Pinch of salt
190ml milk

Preheat the oven to 200ºC
The method is SIMPLE, super super simple. Put all your dry ingredients into a bowl (don’t even bother sifting, it’s not worth the effort), mix them through. Add the butter/lard to the mix in small chunks, get your hands in there and rub the butter into the dry ingredients (you know, like you would if you’re making a crumble). Now, you don’t want it to be the consistency of a crumble, not super fine bread crumbs or whatever, but you want to get the bigger bits of butter worked in good. Then simply add your milk, little at a time, mixing as you go until you have a soft dough ball. Don’t worry if you’ve not used all your milk, or even if you think you need a little more, it’s all good.

Turn your dough out onto a floured surface and roll it to about 1.5-2cm thick. Cut out circles using a cutter, I used the ones with the fancy edges, the generic scone-cutting-devices. If you haven’t got them, get some, they’re cheap in any supermarket’s cookware section. Size doesn’t really matter with this (that’s what she said… HOHO!), go for whatever you think best… these rise upwards, not outwards, too (that’s wh.. no, not twice in the same sentence.. sorry).

Place them on an ungreased baking sheet, or if you have a none stick baking liner thing use that, those are amazing. Put them in the oven and bake for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown, you may need to check the centres just to make sure they’re cooked through, if they’re not just turn off the oven and leave them to cook through with the residual heat. This usually stops them burning on top.

Enjoy! they’re tastey with cheese, jam, honey, or just on their own.

If you’re reading this via an RSS reader visit the site for the printable recipe.