Vintage 7Up Biscuit Recipe - Semi Homemade Recipes (2024)

FAQs

How did they make biscuits in the old days? ›

With no leavening agents except the bitter-tasting pearlash available, beaten biscuits were laboriously beaten and folded to incorporate air into the dough which expanded when heated in the oven causing the biscuit to rise.

Use Cold Butter for Biscuits

For flaky layers, use cold butter. When you cut in the butter, you have coarse crumbs of butter coated with flour. When the biscuit bakes, the butter will melt, releasing steam and creating pockets of air. This makes the biscuits airy and flaky on the inside.

When flour is "scooped" into the measuring cup directly from the container, it compresses, or becomes packed. This means you will be adding more flour than called for in the recipe.

The Earliest Evidence

The Romans certainly had a form of biscuit, what we'd now call a rusk and, as the name suggests, it was essentially bread which was re-baked to make it crisp.

By 1828 Webster defined the confection as "a composition of flour and butter, made and baked in private families." The two main types of biscuits made by chuckwagon cooks were soda and sourdough. Their only method for baking was the Dutch oven. This portable iron pot sat up from the fire on three small feet.

White wheat in general is around 9-12% protein, while the hard reds are 11-15%. As far as brands of flour, White Lily “all-purpose” flour has been my go-to for biscuit making. It's a soft red winter wheat, and the low protein and low gluten content keep biscuits from becoming too dense.

Biscuit recipes tend to be egg-free, this makes them drier and the lack of protein to bind the mix helps achieve that crumbly texture. For super light, crumbly biscuits try grating or pushing the yolks of hard-boiled eggs through a sieve into the biscuit dough.

Rolled Oats (49%), Vegetable Oils (Rapeseed, Sustainable Palm), Sugar, Salt, Flavourings. For allergen information, including cereals containing gluten see ingredients in bold. May also contain Egg, Milk, Soya and Tree Nuts.

Cover the dough loosely with a kitchen towel and allow it to rest for 30 minutes. Gently pat out the dough some more, so that the rectangle is roughly 10 inches by 6 inches. Cut dough into biscuits using a floured biscuit cutter (or even a glass, though its duller edge may result in slightly less tall biscuits).

Fully incorporating the butter and flour guarantees tender, airy biscuits every time. Low-protein flours keep biscuits fluffy and light, never tough. Yogurt provides both hydration and structure, for biscuits that bake up straight and tall but moist.

What happens if you put too much butter in biscuits? ›

Increasing the amount of butter definitely makes the biscuit "taste" softer, more crumbly, and more flaky. I usually associate flakiness and softness with size; you expect a big biscuit to be fluffy and soft, and a biscuit that doesn't rise to be dense.

What makes biscuits Southern? Besides being passed down by beloved grandmothers, Southern biscuits are typically made with flour made from soft red winter wheat, such as White Lily.

If you don't have baking soda on hand, you can use triple the amount of baking powder instead. Alternative substitutions include potassium bicarbonate, baker's ammonia, or self-rising powder. Baking soda is a staple ingredient found in the cupboards of both seasoned and amateur bakers.

The Aberffraw biscuit (sometimes Aberffraw cake or Teisen Berffro) is said to originate from 13th century Anglesey. ​”Legend has it that a Welsh king was holding court in Aberffraw – his wife was walking on the beach there and, spotting a pretty scallop shell, asked for a cake to be baked in the same form.

The Old French word bescuit is derived from the Latin words bis (twice) and coquere, coctus (to cook, cooked), and, hence, means "twice-cooked". This is because biscuits were originally cooked in a twofold process: first baked, and then dried out in a slow oven.