The Best Biscuits

These are THE best biscuits EVER! I make them all the time for biscuits and gravy. They are simple and easy enough to make in the morning. I use to make them with half whole-wheat flour, which is good, BUT they are so much lighter and fluffier when using all white flour. So you can decide, health or taste.

2 cups all-purpose flour

4 teaspoons powder

½ teaspoon salt

¼ cup butter

¼ cup shortening

1 egg

2/3 cup milk

In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Cut in shortening until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Beat egg with milk; stir into dry ingredients just until moistened. Turn onto a well-floured surface; knead 20 times. Roll to 3/4-in. thickness; cut with a floured 2-1/2-in. biscuit cutter. Place on a lightly greased baking sheet. Bake at 450 degrees F for 8-10 minutes or until golden brown. Serve warm.

The original recipe calls for a whole ½ cup of shortening, but I changed it to ¼ cup of butter and a ¼ cup of shortening, which makes all the difference! I can only imagine what they would be like which all butter. I just can’t afford to use a whole stick of butter though every time I make this recipe. I’d go broke!

P.S. This is not a Martha Recipe either...

One-Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes (with mini chocolate chips)

I’m so behind on this blog, it’s ridiculous! I’ve been procrastinating on school work and what not, and so I haven’t been keeping up with my baking. But I finally feel like I’m somewhat caught up in classes, and am trying to start up baking more. J

Val and I made chocolate Halloween cupcakes. First of all it was such an ordeal, because we wanted to use these cute Halloween paper cupcake cups that Val found at Hobby Lobby, unfortunately they were forgotten when I picked up Val. L BUT-My mom had agreed to bring them by the next day. J Alas…she could not find them. She searched the car, Val’s room, the kitchen, but found nothing. L BUT-then my mom was nice enough to pick some up at Target, that were equally as cute. J Yay! So after the paper cupcake cups trauma had passed, we started our one-bowl chocolate cupcakes.

I decided to make 1 ½ recipe because it was only going to make 2 dozen, and recipes rarely make as much as they say anyway. I wanted to have enough to bring to work and for Val to take some home as well. So I thought 3 dozen would be plenty. I sifted all the dry ingredients together first and then started adding the wet ingredients. Everything was going fine, until I started to add the eggs, only to find out that one of my eggs had had a crack in it and stuck to carton and oozed egg everywhere. L Alas…this had been the exact amount of eggs I had needed, and now I was one short. Mayonnaise. Yes, you can substitute 3 tablespoons of mayo for 1 whole egg. So this is what I did. I also added a cup of mini chocolate chips just for fun!

I must have added too much mayo or maybe I should have lessened the oil, since I added the mayo, because after baking the first dozen, the middles had sunken. L So before scooping out the second dozen I added some more flour and lowered the temp of the oven. The second dozen came out better, but still didn’t rise as much as I wanted, but I kept on baking and before I knew it the recipe had made like 5 dozen cupcakes!! There were so many! And we had to decorate them all!

We did spiderwebs, ghosties, pumpkins, jack o’lanterns, headstones, and then we got to the last dozen and just slapped on the Halloween sprinkles and sugar, because we were tired of being intricate with our designs.

They turned out REALLY moist and yummy despite the mishap. And also really cute!

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Unfortunately for this blog, this is not a Martha Stewart recipe. Seeing the pictures of her chocolate chunk cookies made me decide not to go along with her recipe. Though, mine were not as good as I would have like them to be either. I’ve tweaked this recipe from a recipe I found at allrecipes.com, and it’s still a work in progress. I like the texture and the softness of them, but I’ve decided that the dough needs a little more sugar added to it. I like my chocolate chip cookies soft and little, and that’s exactly what these are. I’m not a fan of crunchy cookies, unless they are gingersnaps, and even those I make on the soft side. J (I know I set the date on this forever ago, but that’s when I made them, so I try to post the day I made them, not the day I actually posted it.)