A Healthy (er) Biscuit / Scone
Who doesn’t love a nice warm biscuit or scone, straight from the oven on a Sunday morning? The only problem is that the typical version, made with white flour and heavy cream will leave you hungry an hour later and feeling a little guilty (if you prefer a lower fat diet for your family). These are still in the “treat” category, as they are made with lots of butter, but I have replaced half of the flour with whole wheat and replaced the heavy cream with 1% milk. The kids still gobble them up as if they were their 100% white flour cousins but I feel a bit better serving them. You can go 100% whole wheat (in fact, I love them like that too), but they will be a little more dense and might not fool the masses as well. I suggest a “weaning process” myself. I have successfully done that with many recipes. Start with the original recipe and each time you make them, increase the whole wheat flour a bit. The trick is to get them LOVING your biscuits enough to not inspect them closely, but rather, just close their eyes and enjoy them!
These biscuits can be made into “drop biscuits”, which is how I love them (see recipe note below) or “scone-shaped” with added dried fruit, berries, seeds or nuts. Try a sprinkle of cinnamon too! They can be cut out to look more uniform, if you prefer. This is the recipe I use for Strawberry Shortcake biscuits too. (Or blueberry shortcake or any other kind of seasonal fruit, for that matter!) Serve them with fresh fruit and a blob of whip cream for a delicious dessert.
Baking Soda Biscuit Re-mix
These are best served warm from the over with jam. They are also fantastic as Strawberry Shortcake biscuits.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup whole wheat flour
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
- ½ cup cold butter, cut into pea sized pieces
- 1 cup milk
- 1/4 cup sugar
Instructions:
- Pre-heat over to 400 degrees F.
- Using your hands, toss the dry ingredients with the cut up butter to evenly incorporate the baking powder, sugar and salt with the flour.
- Using a pastry cutter, cut the butter into the dry ingredients a bit further, to make sure you don’t have any large lumps of butter left.
- Pour the milk into the dry ingredients and fold it all together. You are going for “just mixed” here. Do not over work.
- Drop the biscuits into an unlined non-stick cookie sheet. They can be whatever size you want but kids love small things. I make them about the size of an egg. If you like, you can turn the dough on to a floured surface and pat it into a slab about an inch thick and punch out rounds to make a more uniform shape but I like the rustic look of a “drop biscuit”, myself. Also -less work, and less clean up. Wiping the counter down afterward is an extra step I don’t need!
- Bake them until they are nicely browned and are firm to the touch. The timing really depends on the oven and the size of the dough. For small biscuits, I start the timer for 5 minutes and check them. If they have no colour yet, I let them go for another 2 min and then touch them. The touch test is really the best. You want to make sure they have no “give” to them and should look dry and be flecked with brown spots. Small biscuits usually take 7-10 min and large ones usually take 15-20 min, depending on how big.
