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.

As the biscuits rise, the carbon dioxide gas expands, creating pressure on the dough. This pressure can cause the dough to collapse without proper support. Cream of Tartar helps stabilize the dough structure, ensuring the biscuits maintain their shape and rise uniformly.

Selecting the liquid for your biscuits

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.

That is why you will notice that recipes usually call for a small amount of baking soda, typically ¼ teaspoon per 1 cup of flour. Do not make the mistake of trying to substitute equal parts baking soda for baking powder in recipes. Your baked goods will have no leavening, be quite flat, and have an altered taste.

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.

The cornstarch lowers the protein of the flour, which produces a more tender biscuit. The heavy cream provides the fat that helps create the flaky layers in great biscuits.

Aeration/Foaming. Aeration is a critical function in the formulation of baked goods. It refers to the process of introducing gas into a liquid or viscous solution. Beaten whole eggs as well as egg whites on their own, are highly effective leavening agents, incorporating air into the dough or batter.

Increasing the amount of butter definitely makes the biscuit "taste" softer, more crumbly, and more flaky.

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.

How to make a Mary Berry biscuit? ›

Do not Overwork Biscuit Dough. Handle the dough as little as possible. Every time you touch, knead and fold, you are developing gluten. The more developed the gluten, the tougher the biscuit.

Only reroll the dough once

If you're set on having round biscuits, that's OK! Just be sure not to overwork the dough by rerolling it many times. Constantly working with the dough not only melts the butter (and cold butter is the secret to fluffy biscuits) but it develops gluten—and that can cause tough, chewy biscuits.

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.

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.