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.

Just as important as the fat is the liquid used to make your biscuits. Our Buttermilk Biscuit recipe offers the choice of using milk or buttermilk. Buttermilk is known for making biscuits tender and adding a zippy tang, so we used that for this test.

Use Cold Butter for Biscuits

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.

If you accidentally add baking soda instead of baking powder to baked goods, they won't rise because there is not enough acid. To fix this, add about one tablespoon of white or apple cider vinegar for every half teaspoon of baking soda to the liquids before mixing with the dry ingredients.

THE ABERFFRAW BISCUIT (or cake) goes by a number of names, but whatever you call it, with a tradition dating back to the 13th century, it's often held up as the oldest recognised biscuit in Britain.

INGREDIENTS: Flour (WHEAT Flour, Calcium, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Vegetable Oils (Rapeseed, Sustainable Palm), Sugar, Rolled OATS (11%), Raising Agents: Sodium Hydrogen Carbonate, Diphosphate; Free Range Pasteurised EGG, Rice Flour, Salt, Flavourings.

So what's the final verdict? Butter is the winner here. The butter biscuits were moister with that wonderful butter taste and melt-in-your mouth texture. I'd be curious to test out substituting half or just two tablespoons of the butter with shortening to see if you get the best of both.

Buttermilk adds a nice tang to the biscuit flavor and helps them rise better.

While there are plenty of flour varieties to choose from, White Lily reigns above all else for Southern bakers and is the crème de la crème when it comes to the flour we use for any biscuit recipe.

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.

What makes Southern biscuits so good? ›

Southern cooks have several tricks when it comes to making tender and delicious biscuits, from the cutters they use, to the type and amount of liquid incorporated, to the number of kneads required to turn out a perfect dough. The not-so-secret ingredient they rely upon is soft wheat flour.

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. It kept for longer than plain bread, and was useful for travellers and soldiers' rations.

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.

More eggs were added and were whipped into the batter to add air. Yeast was used. Baking ammonia was used. Foods such as cakes and other baked goods would have been more dense with a somewhat different taste.

The biscuit making process is elaborate and continuous. The ingredients are combined to form a dough, which is kneaded and rolled to a uniform thickness. It is cut into biscuit shapes and placed in a travelling oven. Some biscuits necessitate special preparation and cooking methods.