Homemade Biscuits and Cookies

I came home from work to a deliciously fragrant pot of white bean, vegetable and sausage soup; thank you Jeff!  All the soup needed to be a complete meal was biscuits.  So Aubrey and I phoned grandma to get her recipe.  Aubrey wanted the biscuits that we cut and NO cheese; not too sure why she was so adamant about that?!

 

2 cups flour

4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cream of tartar

2 tsp sugar

1/2 cup shortening (I used butter)

2/3 cup milk

 

We mixed all of the dry ingredients together.

Aubrey cut in the butter by hand and then kneaded in the milk.

We poured the dough out onto the counter and kneaded it for a few minutes to get everything combined.

 

We rolled this out to about 1/2 inch thick with our rolling pin.

Aubrey's choice was to use the heart cutter; its a little small but this way we can eat more biscuits!

The recipe said to bake at 450F for 10-12 minutes.  I was quite skeptical; especially when I smelt a burning smell wafting from the oven.  Maybe ours were cut too small to be baked at 450F?

I salvaged half of them by cutting off the burnt bottoms; no one even noticed.  I turned the oven down to 400F for the second batch.

These were a hit; Aubrey ate three warm right from the oven.  She was very proud of herself. 

 

By this time we had invited a few of my family members over for soup and biscuits so Aubrey and I decided to make some cookies for dessert.  My co-worker had raved about this Martha Stewart Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe; I decided to give it a try.

 

The only change I made to this was I only added 1 1/2 cups of chocolate chips; it felt a little excessive!

I used my paddle attachment on my kitchen aid mixture and whipped my butter and sugars until fluffy.  I beat in my eggs, vanilla and salt.  I mixed in the flour and baking soda mixture just until it was combined.  Then I stirred in the chocolate chips.

Snow White joined me back in the kitchen to portion out the cookie dough! 

We placed heaping tablespoon size balls on our parchment lined baking sheets.  We baked these at 350F for about  10 minutes. 

Snuggle break:

We laid on the couch waiting for the timer to go off and phoned Jeff at work; this was the best part of my day.  I truly have the best of both worlds; work in the mornings and spend every afternoon with the funniest 3 year old I know!  

The edges were brown and the centres were barely set; we left them on the stove for 2 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.

This recipe did not disappoint.  I was quite impressed! I don't always find that Ms. Stewarts recipes turn out but this is definitely a winner; I will be saving this in my repertoire.

Everyone loved the soup, biscuits and  cookies.  What a simple meal but so comforting.