Very simple drop biscuits

[steorra]

I've been remembering recently what a simple and useful recipe scones are. They're a very versatile recipe, and I've made a post in boilingwater giving my mom's basic recipe and outlining some of the various substitutions and variations that are possible. I thought for this community I'd try posting a version of the recipe that's stripped down to the bare minimum, to be as simple as possible. This is a cross between a variant of my mother's scone recipe and a biscuit recipe from the More with Less cookbook. I'm calling this version biscuits rather than scones because they use baking powder rather than baking soda and cream of tartar as leavening. They're drop biscuits because you drop them like cookies onto a baking sheet rather than rolling out the dough and cutting out the scones.

Ingredients
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup butter or margarine (or less; down to 2 tablespoons should be okay)
1 cup water

Instructions
Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit (approximately 215-220 degrees Celsius).

Mix together in a bowl the flour, baking powder, and salt.

Cut or rub in the butter or margarine.

Add the water, and mix quickly to form a soft dough.

Grease a baking sheet. Use spoons to drop the dough like cookies onto the baking sheet.

Bake 10 to 12 minutes. Best served hot.

(Note: this is an unsweetened variant, because omitting sugar is simplest. For slightly sweet biscuits, add 2-3 tablespoons sugar before adding water. For more information about variations and substitutions, see my post on scones in boilingwater.)

Comments

[giglet]

Hi,

I kinda know what cutting in is, but it's still mysterious to me. Why chop up the butter to add it? Why not just melt it and pour it in? What is rubbing in?

[steorra]

You know, it would likely work that way too, but that's not the way the recipe I learned called for and it never occurred to me as a possibility. It'd be worth a try, and if you'd like me to test it and post the results, I can do so.

[steorra]

Oh, and as for what 'cutting in' or 'rubbing in' is:
When I learnt cut butter in at my mom's place, I always used a special 'cutting-in' tool. It's called a pastry cutter, and I'm having a hard time figuring out how to describe it. It's sort of like a curved metal band with usually four parallel blunt blades and a handle connecting the ends of the band opposite the blades, and you can push it down into the bowl to cut the buter finely into the flour mixture. (There's a picture on this page if that helps: http://superstarchefmark.blogspot.com/2010/04/april-24-25-blueberry-crisp-with.html )

I don't own a pastry cutter now, so I usually rub it in by cutting up the butter with a kife so it's a bit small, and then just using my hands to rub all the chunks of butter into the flour until it's evenly distributed and not lumpy.

[steorra]

Hi,
I just wanted to let you know, very belatedly, that I've now tried it with melting the butter and pouring it in, rather then cutting it in. Melting it doesn't harm anything, but the melted butter clumps up in the flour and I find I still need to rub/cut it a bit to make it evenly distributed. (It does take less cutting/rubbing work than starting with cold butter.)

[lea_hazel]

I'm adding this to my memories to try at a later date. :)