Biscuits!

I believe I've mentioned it before, but I am an utter failure when it comes to brownies. And actually, as Alann pointed out, most desserts kind of fail. Sure, I can make yummy bread, but brownies end up awful. Cookies I am ok at, but they aren't grand. Pie crust comes out good one time and bad the next. And fudge- don't get me started on fudge. See, look at my poor brownies:

Because of these baking downfalls, I've always tended to look at certain things as out of my reach- pie crust for example. I just started trying to find a good recipe for that. And biscuits. I believe I tried them once, and it just made a big sticky mess. We both love those "southern style" crumbly biscuits, like the kind you get on a McDonald's breakfast sandwich (except fresh and not all weird and rubbery). I've been afraid to make them myself, so we buy the frozen kind when they are on sale (and then we ration them, because otherwise, we would eat them every time we make a hot breakfast). I would love to make my own biscuits. I know that pretty much any premade bread product is cheaper and tastier if you make it yourself. $2 for a package of 12 is what I usually pay. Not awful, but they also have preservatives and strange words in them. On Saturday, I cleaned the kitchen, which always makes me want to cook something elaborate. So I got brave and looked for an easy recipe. And look at what happened:

Isn't it gorgeous? It tasted good too. In case you can't tell just from looking at it, it's half whole wheat flour too. (I've got Alann trained to where he can tell just by looking if I used whole flour or not.) I froze half the batch to make later, to see how they turn out. These were surprisingly easy though. The recipe is from All-Recipes. It's called Fluffy whole wheat biscuits in case it doesn't come up. I followed the recipe exactly (I actually do that when baking, since I don't want to screw it up). The only thing I did differently was mix in about 3/4 of the milk at first, and then added the rest, since some of the reviews said it was soupy, and I hate kneading really soft doughs. I didn't find that to be the case at all, but better safe than sorry right? I got 15 biscuits out of about 15 minutes of work. The dough came together nicely. Be gentle when kneading. Over-mixing the dough leads to tough biscuits (I sound like an expert. But I did see Alton Brown make biscuits once, and that's what he said.) My plan is, if the freezing thing works out well, than every once in a while, I will make a double or triple batch, bake what I want, and freeze the rest. We usually eat all the ones I bake. I baked 8 for dinner Saturday (leftover ham and bean soup), and we ate 6. Six is the most I will bake for just us, especially when we buy the premade ones, because they are so seemingly expensive. But no more! From now on, I will not be afraid of biscuits! Next time, I might even try garlic-cheese...