Thursday, July 18, 2013

Cinnamon-Raisin Biscuits

I really like biscuits.  I like them for dinner on my birthday, with mom's meatloaf and mashed potatoes.  These are more breakfast-y.  We had them with eggs, bacon, and sausage, but we had them at dinnertime.  I saw somewhere, I can't remember where, they were calling it Brinner when you eat breakfast for dinner.  I don't really like that name.  We call it "breakfast for supper," because that's what we always called it.  This recipe came from the Southern Living cookbook I'm going through.  In the past, after several bad experiences, I have shied away from recipes where you have to roll out the dough.  Usually for biscuits, though, you can make them "drop" biscuits instead of rolling them out.  I decided to just make up the dough and see how it was, and proceed from there...

Cinnamon-Raisin Biscuits
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups sifted cake flour (I had some of this leftover from a birthday cake I made, so I used it...I don't know that I would buy it just for this, next time I'll try it with 3 cups of all-purpose and see how it is...also I didn't sift it, even though it says to)
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
3/4 cup butter
1 cup raisins
1 cup milk
1 1/2 tbsp butter, melted
1 cup sifted powdered sugar (again, I didn't sift it)
1 1/2 tbsp milk

Combine first 6 ingredients in a large bowl; cut in 3/4 cup butter with pastry blender until mixture is crumbly.  Add raisins and 1 cup milk, stirring until dry ingredients are moistened.  Turn dough out onto lightly floured surface, and knead 4 or 5 times.

Roll dough to 1-inch thickness (at this point I discovered I could just flatten it out with my hands...this made me happy...it was easy to flatten and stretch the dough into a big circle and cut from there).  Cut with a 2-inch biscuit cutter (I used the bottom of a glass because I still don't have a real biscuit cutter; maybe I'll get one now though).  Place on greased baking sheets.  Brush with melted butter.  Bake at 400 for 15 minutes or until lightly browned.

Combine powdered sugar and 1 1/2 tbsp milk, stirring until smooth.  Drizzle glaze over warm biscuits.  Yield: 15 biscuits.

These came out perfect.  Just right.  And, I had the leftovers on the 3 following mornings.  I wrapped 2 of them in a paper towel and warmed them up in the microwave for 1 minute and they tasted just as good as the first night.  That is not typical of biscuits at all (at least not mine) so maybe there's something to be said about using cake flour?  I don't know...really good recipe, and definitely one we'll have again.

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