Le Bon Petit Chou: Beautiful Buttery Biscuits

I don't think I had ever had a biscuit before...or if I had, I had only taken a bite and then passed it off to someone else because it was unappetizingly bland, greasy, or dry. Biscuits had a very negative connotation in my mind. I associated them with heavy, southern, soul food, which is exactly the opposite of my food tastes. However, I saw this recipe for biscuits a few months back and got inspired. Of course, it took me several months before I actually got around to making them, but they were well worth the wait! These biscuits were oh so light and fluffy. They puffed up beautifully in the oven...much more than I expected...imagine my surprise when I walked into the kitchen five minutes after having put them in the oven to see my once 1/2 inch tall dough lumps now standing a good 2-2 1/2 inches! I was amazed. I wish I had a time-lapse camera to see those babies rise up. Alas, being out of practice in photodocumenting, I forgot to take a pre-oven picture, so I have no comparison to the final product to show. But believe you me, it was an astonishing transformation...a metamorphosis if you will...one that paralleled my own transformation from a biscuit hater to a biscuit lover.

Biscuits
(adapted from Half Baked)

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cup AP flour
1/3 cups cake flour (I substituted with 1/4 cup AP flour and 2 tsp cornstarch)
1 tbsp baking powder
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 tsp salt
6 tbsp (3/4 stick) of very cold butter, cut into 12 pieces
3/4 cup whole milk

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.
Whisk together the dry ingredients in a medium bowl.
Drop in the cold pieces of butter. Cut the butter into the dry ingredients using a pastry cutter or rub the butter in with your fingers until you have a pebble-like mixture. Work quickly! You want the butter to stay very cold.
Once you have pea-sized pieces (and some bigger and smaller pieces as well) of butter in the flour, add in the milk. Mix with a fork just until the dough comes together. Do not over-mix!
Using your hands, grab the dough and knead it 3-4 times just to bring it into a nice lump of dough.
On a lightly floured surface, dump out the dough and roll it to be 1/2 inch thick. You may need to flour the dough lightly to keep it from sticking.
Cut the biscuits using a biscuit cutter or round cookie cutter. I had neither of these, so I used a glass cup, which is apparently a big no-no, but it worked! Cut the biscuits as close together as possible so that you can get the most biscuits out of the first round of cutting.
Pile up the scraps and roll them out again to 1/2 inch thick. Cut more biscuits. If you must repeat, repeat. Beware: the more times you handle the dough, the tougher and less fluffy it will become.
Place the biscuits on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake in the oven for 12-14 minutes until puffed and golden!
Serve warm with marmalade...or more butter! These taste particularly good when eaten on the deck, sitting in warm sunshine.

*These biscuits can be reheated in the oven the next day or frozen and then reheated with lovely results!