Biscuit break

After a wonderful Valentines & Family day weekend, extended to a 5 day weekend for us due to a lovely snowstorm.. I struggled to get back to the books today. Current assignment is on anger with a separate study on personality disorders. The book on Anger is really quite good, but I just couldn’t get into it today. So, i decided to take a break and bake some biscuits. Truth be told.. i made these yesterday morning as well… but they were gone in a couple of hours – and I failed to take pics during the process, so I thought I’d bake them again today.

When i was young.. my sister Judi used to make a form of “schnetki” after school often to go with our tea. I learned how to make it later.. and then somewhere/how lost the recipe. I’m not much of a white flour/bread/baking person. I don’t crave it. But on winter days when we’re buried in snow, I found myself craving a good hot flaky tea biscuit to spread some good strawberry jam on and enjoy with a hot cuppa tea. I found a super simple recipe on line from Dessert now, Dinner Later that will give you all the tips and tricks for a fantastic flakey fool proof tea biscuit.

Here is the recipe:

I was a wee bit generous with the baking powder – a nice heaping tbsp.

If you do any type of pastry baking, you know the drill, sift dry ingredients together, then blend in the cold butter til pea size form. DO NOT OVERWORK.

For the buttermilk, I put about 2 tsps of lemon juice in my measuring cup, then filled with 2% to the 3/4 mark line and let sit for close to 10 min. It was THICK.

The trick to flaky pastry is 2 part.. again; do not overwork, and layer, layer, layer. I probably relayered 5 times. If you’re no longer seeing the bits of butter, you’ve overworked.

See the layers even before baking?

I missed one part of Amber’s very important advice.. and that was to gently lift up any sides that were stuck down after cutting the biscuits, before going into the oven. I likely should have also floured my snowflake cookie cutter. You can see below what happens when you don’t.. just a wee bit lopsided… woopsie! These were baked at 450 for 10 1/2 min. I might go a little less next time… which may or may not be tomorrow..

but still, super flaky, soft centre, crispy outside.. and just YUMMY.

super flakey snowflake biscuits for a perfect snowy day

Published by billandamyskitchen

Bill (Guillermo 'cause he likes pretending he knows Spanish) and I (Amy) have been married since Sept 2005. We live in Southern Ontario, Canada - Niagara Peninsula in fact, smack dab between 2 of the Great Lakes. We love God, our family, our church family, and making each other laugh. (ergo the profile pic, he decided to make our photographer laugh by throwing a leg up on me just before the shutter clicked, which made ME laugh) When we married, I told Bill: "I don't know how to cook" but he had faith in me. So 15 years later, I'm still learning, and having fun. I've never (in my whole life) cooked a whole bird, chicken, turkey or otherwise. I've never roasted a beef, other than in a crockpot on low for 8 hrs. I like trying to find healthy & easy recipes and then I rarely follow them. I don't enjoy recipes that take hours or intricate steps. I have a special fondness for the Podleski sisters, writers/creators of the Looney Spoons, Crazy Plates and Yum/Yummer cookbooks. In 2018 we suddenly decided to rip our small house apart from stem to stern, moving out for 4.5 months while the house was demolished inside and out, and then rebuilt with an addition. If you go back in the archives to July-Dec 2018 you can follow that story. It's made our house open and so much more conducive to entertaining, small groups and large. It's given us the kitchen I've dreamed of to create and learn in. We feel incredibly blessed to be able to write about our journey, our faith in God and some fun recipes along the way. Thanks for joining us. View more posts