Biscuits, Egg McMuffins and dumplings(Edited)

I didn't realize that when I cut and pasted this recipe, it overfilled the area allowed and that the instructions weren't readable. Sorry. I usually check and try to be very careful with my posts. But I don't usually go to the page itself to check it. If ever you find another non-readable page, please let me know so I can go correct it.


I've had a request for my biscuit recipe. The Mom's angel biscuits is my favorite one.

Mom's Angel biscuits
	5 cups Flour 3 Tbs Sugar 1 Tbs Baking Powder 1 tsp baking SODA 1 tbs or 1 pkg. yeast 3/4 cup mayo or shortening 1/2 cup warm water 2 cup Buttermilk, warmed 1 Combine dry ingredients in bowl. Add mayo, water and warmed buttermilk. Blend well. You can either use it now or cover and chill. This dough will be a soft dough. 2 When ready to use, spoon a large spoonful into flour canister and shape into a round shape. Place on greased cookie sheet. Then turn on oven and set your cookie sheet near oven vent. When the oven is to temperature, bake biscuits at 400 for 10-12 mins. Until golden brown. Yield: 2 doz cat head biscuits. Eat what you want 'n' freeze the rest. Nuke for a minute or two when you're ready to eat a frozen one. Cooking Tips If you use shortening, it must be cut into the dry ingredients before adding liquid to mix. The mayo keeps the cooked biscuits soft - even when they've gotten cold. In other words, they don't get that hard outer shell that regular biscuits get.
	NOTE: When using Mayonnaise for baking (to keep the cooked baked good soft when it's cold) you must be sure to use REAL Mayo. Not "Miracle Whip", not salad dressing, not "lite" or "reduced fat" mayo, but the real stuff. Otherwise it won't work properly.

Oh, for all the Yankees (can ya'll tell I'm from the South? hehe) and my foreign friends I will explain what a "cat head" biscuit is. It's a biscuit that's the size of a cat's head. True, I swear it.
Without all the fur - fur's nasty, we don't eat that. Of course, cat is probably nasty too and we don't eat them either - unless you're from a different culture. I've heard that there are some cultures that do eat cat!

Most American's roll out their biscuit dough to about 1/2" thick and use a 2" cutter (or a kitchen glass like you'd drink water out of if you have company - no, honey, NOT the Mason jar, we only drink from one of those if we're by ourselves or on a picnic!) . Then they transfer the dough to a cookie sheet, mush the left-over, cut up dough together and reroll it until the dough is used up. That method is supposed to give you 5 dozen (That's right FIVE DOZEN) hockey pucks, I mean biscuits. And they measure 2.25" x 3/4" Just about right to play hockey, but no size to make a meal out of it. Plus, by the time it's been rolled out a couple of time, the resulting biscuits have some real chewiness to them. Makes 'em REALLY good for hockey then! If you insist on rolling and cutting, at least use an empty tuna can for the cutter (yes, you clean it first. Tuna biscuits - ewwweeeee. I don't like fish. Not much anyway. Fried catfish and smoked mullet are about my only fish eating forays. Shrimp and lobster don't count!) And for pity sakes, roll the dough out THICKLY I'm talking 1 1/2" worth of thickness. 1/2" thick biscuits - shudder!

Cat head biscuits are good size biscuits. The kind you can open up and put stuff on - like fried egg and a sausage patty, scrambled egg and bacon or sausage gravy. Substantial enough to make it a meal by itself. Who needs Micky D's? By the way, you do know that all an Egg McMuffin is is a buttered, toasted English muffin with a piece of Canadian bacon on the bottom, a fried egg on top of that and an piece of cheese topped with the other side of the muffin? So break your eggs in muffin tin sections, and bake at 350 until the yolk is just set. While the eggs cook, butter and toast your muffins and then make a batch of these all at once, wrap well, put in a zipper bag and freeze. Take one out, unwrap it from any plastic, wrap in a paper towel or cloth napkin and nuke it for 1-2 mins. Now you just saved $$$. And you know what's in it. I got one at Micky D's once and it had the root bottom slice of an onion on it. Talk about YUCK! And I took it to go, so there was no returning it. (I discovered it quite a few miles down the road!)

When I make my biscuits, I use my large serving spoon - this is larger than the regular spoons that you'd eat soup with, but smaller than the 1/2 cup size, slotted buffet-type spoons. I use this to just plop the mixed, unkneaded dough into my flour container. (This practice may be why the old recipes tell you to sift the flour. lol)

You can just scoop some flour into a mixing bowl and use that instead of getting dough particles in your flour canister. Anyway, you're wanting to take a big spoonful of dough and put it into the flour. Coat the dough with flour and shape into a round shape, with a flat bottom, tucking in the edges and making it smooth as you shape it. After doing a few, you'll get the hang of what you're doing. My biscuits start out about 3" in diameter and about 1 1/2" high. They rise and spread some as they cook so they end up larger, about 4" in diameter and about 2 1/2" high.

There's another way to make these. Take all the dough, knead it for a couple of seconds with some more flour - just enough to get it to a smooth dough instead of rough pieces of dough. Then pat it out onto your lightly greased cookie sheet and lightly score it with a knife into biscuit size portions. I'd make 5 scores the long way (6 pieces) and 3 scores the short way. (4 pieces) That would give you 24 biscuits. Don't cut all the way through the dough. Let it rise a little while the oven preheats.

Now there's one last way to make biscuits. My exMIL used to keep self-rising flour in a container. She'd pop the top, add her mayo to the top of the flour and stir it about. Then she'd add milk - yup right in the canister. She'd use her fingers to stir the milk in, then pull out some dough, shape and plop on the cookie sheet. That's a woman that's been making biscuits for 60+ YEARS. Personally, I'm not that brave. I'd have the whole canister oozing milk.

Here's my dumpling recipe:

Dumplings x1

This is good for one or two people

1 ½ cups flour 2 tsp baking powder ¾ tsp salt 3 tbs shortening or mayo ¾ cup milk

1 °If using self-rising flour, omit baking powder and salt 2 Measure flour, baking powder and salt into bowl. Mix together 3 Cut in shortening thoroughly, until mixture looks like meal. Or use mayo and add to milk then 4 Stir in milk 5 Dip tablespoon in cold water. Dip up dough, use second spoon dipped in cold water to drop dough by spoonfuls onto hot liquid. (Instructions say to drop on meat or vegies, not in liquid, but it's always worked out in the liquid for me. 6 Cook covered, 10-15 mins or until dumplings are fluffy and then another 10 mins without the lid.

Yield: 8-10 dumplings

Dumplings x2

This is good for 2 or 3 people 3 cups flour° 4 tsp Baking powder 1 ½ tsp salt 6 tbs shortening or mayo 1 ½ cups milk 1 °If using self-rising flour, omit baking powder and salt This recipe has been doubled. 2 Measure flour, baking powder and salt into bowl. Mix together 3 Cut in shortening thoroughly, until mixture looks like meal. Or add mayo to the milk. 4 Stir in milk 5 Dip tablespoon in cold water. Dip up dough, use second spoon dipped in cold water to drop dough by spoonfuls onto hot liquid. (Instructions say to drop on meat or vegies, not in liquid, but it's always worked out in the liquid for me. 6 Cook covered, 10-15 mins or until dumplings are fluffy remove lid and cook another 10 mins. Yield: 16-20 dumplings

Dumplings x3

This is good for 3-4 people.

4 1/2 cups flour° 2 tbs baking powder 2 1/4 tsp salt ½ cup shortening, or mayo PLUS 1 tbs shortening or mayo 2 ¼ cups milk

1 °If using self-rising flour, omit baking powder and salt This recipe has been tripled. 2 Measure flour, baking powder and salt into bowl. Mix together 3 Cut in shortening thoroughly, until mixture looks like meal. or add mayo to the milk. 4 Stir in milk 5 Dip tablespoon in cold water. Dip up dough, use second spoon dipped in cold water to drop dough by spoonfuls onto hot liquid. (Instructions say to drop on meat or vegies, not in liquid, but it's always worked out in the liquid for me. 6 Cook covered, 10-15 mins or until dumplings are fluffy, remove lid and cook another 10 mins.

Yield: 24-30 dumplings

My servings are based upon hungry teenagers. I'm sure regular people would eat less. I'm about sure that each large dumpling would be one serving of bread in an exchange diet.

Also, I use the same spoon to make dumplings as I do to make the angel biscuits. I cut WAY back on the SALT! We eat a lot, but don't use much salt. I don't like salty dumplings.

I haven't tried this recipe yet, but I know you can do much the same with the angle biscuit recipe.

Paula's Purty Nearly Instant Biscuits

6 cups self-rising biscuit flour (OR 6 cups flour, plus 3 tablespoons baking powder & 1 Tbs salt) 1 cup shortening (or mayo - if'n ya hate cutting in that bleeping shortening!) mix it with the buttermilk. 2 cups buttermilk OR sour milk OR yogurt thinned with a little milk or water 1 This recipe is inspired from somebody's very dear friend named Paula. It involves preparing biscuits from scratch and then freezing the unbaked biscuits. Paula created the idea because her family always wanted her good biscuits for supper, and she needed a way to make them hot, and fresh, even on days when she didn't feel like baking. The results are divinely inspired. 2 First get out a large mixing bowl. Measure in the self rising biscuit flour (or flour, baking powder and salt). Add the firmly packed shortening and mash it into the flour with your fingers or a fork. DO Not Overmix. The shortening should be casually combined with the flour, and small chunks the size of dried beans should remain. This is what makes the biscuits flakey. Now stir in the buttermilk or sour milk or thinned out yogurt. Stir it up until you have a nice soft dough. Knead the dough about 10 or 12 times. NO more, No less. This activates the gluten in the flour just enough to make good biscuits. Roll the dough out into a nice thick slab. I use a rolling pin, but any sturdy jar or glass will do. Cut the dough into biscuit shapes. Use a clean can or glass rim, if you don't have a biscuit cutter. Tuna cans are just the right size for big breakfast biscuits. Continue rolling and cutting until all the dough is used up. (Or make ya some o' them cat heads or pat it into your pan and score em.) 3 Lay waxed paper on a plate or large pan. Arrange the shaped biscuit dough on the waxed paper. Freeze a couple of hours or overnight. (If I leave any bread product more than a couple of hours, they start to dry out. So freeze for a couple of hours or cover with plastic wrap.) When frozen, the biscuits can be gathered up and stashed in plastic freezer bag. 4 When you want to cook them, just take out the specific number you want and place them on a lightly oiled cookie sheet or pizza pan. Bake in a preheated 425 to 450° oven for about 10 minutes. The biscuits will rise up beautifully and will be a nice golden brown when done. 5 These biscuits are better tasting, and much cheaper than canned whack-'em-on-the-counter-biscuits. The whole recipe makes between 30 and 35 medium sized biscuits, or about 20 big breakfast size biscuits (grand-sized).