a kilo is 1000 grams

I fully intended to return my cousin's baking scale and Bread Bible when I saw her last weekend. I have had it for almost a year and, while I greatly enjoy having it close at hand just in case, I don't think I have used it enough to warrant such an extended loan time. However, I forgot to return the book and it is still sitting with my continuously expanding cookbook collection.

In order to assuage some of my guilt at holding the Bible hostage, I vowed to put the thing to use. Since real bread baking is a very long and patience-demanding process, I decided to stick with something small for this round: biscuits. I have attempted to create the most delicious of small quick- bread items on multiple occasions. Most recently, Dani, Camila and I had some luck with our biscuit attempt (although the tasty factor might have had something to do with the copious amounts of clotted cream we piled on top of them..). I have never been fully thrilled with the outcome, though. As I closely followed Rose Levy Beranbaum's instructions, I became increasingly convinced that these biscuits would join the ranks of previous failures. How mistaken I was.

Butter is better than shortening biscuits

adapted from Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum

* 3 tbsp butter (the book recipe called for shortening but ew)

* 3 tbsp sugar

* 1 1/2 cups flour

* 2 tsp baking powder

* 1 tsp salt

* 1/2 cup heavy cream

* 3/4 cup buttermilk (can use one or the other, but this is the combination I used based on the amount of cream that I had left after brownies)

* 1 cup extra flour

Preheat oven to 475˚ F. Grease a cake pan. Place a cookie sheet on the middle rack and leave in the oven.

Mix the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder in a bowl. Crumble in the butter with your fingertips until it resembles... small crumbs.

Stir in the cream/buttermilk mixture. Don't overbeat. The mixture will be very soft and wet (Rose described it as resembling mashed potatoes, but mine was even wetter, much to my initial distress).

Pour the extra cup of flour into a separate cake pan. Use a spoon to scoop biscuit-sized (interpret as you will) clumps of dough/batter into the flour. Pour more flour on top of dough until coated with flour. Place the floured dough-ball into the greased cake pan. Note: this step involved a good deal of guesswork. Rose's recipe instructed simply sprinkling some flour on top of the dough balls before transferring them to the baking dish. Since mine were so wet, I had to use a good amount of flour to form the dough into a proper ball shape, otherwise the clump would remain runny and shape-less. Once coated in flour, they held up relatively well.

Repeat the flouring process, placing the balls in the pan so they are all touching. Once all the dough has been formed and in the pan, place on the baking sheet in the oven and raise temperature to 500˚ F. Bake for 5 minutes, then lower temperature back to 475˚ F. Bake for 10-15 minutes longer until brownish and risen. Let them cool in the pan for a few minutes, then turn out onto a plate.

I ended up with something of a biscuit cake, despite my excessive flouring, the biscuits had fused together during the baking process and it was difficult to tell exactly where to pull them apart. This turned out to be a negligible problem. While the biscuit shapes were not perfectly round and the sizes varied, the buttery, light, warm fluffiness of the biscuits compensated for any asymmetry. Clotted cream would have been an ideal addition, but jam, buttery spread (product placement!), and lemon curd did the trick.