Step Lightly - Spritely Southern Biscuits

Step lightly,

You're movin' too fast.

Take your time, boy,

Soon the pain will pass.

In the meantime,

You gotta find yourself a love

That's gonna last.

Step lightly,

Things will work out fine.

Nice and easy,

All it takes is time.

Please, believe me, 

I wish this song was yours instead of mine.

Back to convenience foods ... and then there was Bisquick.  I've been using Bisquick for years, probably dating back to my first recipe for sausage balls that I got from a coworker at the insurance broker.  You know the one.  I got it from that coworker in 1977, and it was old then.  Sausage, cheese, and Bisquick.  Couldn't be simpler or better.

(I have no freaking idea why the font is misbehaving.  It looks normal on the draft page, and all the settings are where they should be.)

Best of are the Impossible Pies.  This one has always been my favorite, and even without a crust, reminds me of Ebinger's coconut custard pie.  Mirabile dictu,  Bisquick rocks!

I spend an inordinate amount of time surfing the net for recipes and other cooking ideas, and sometimes I surf sideways to follow an interesting link within a link.  This biscuit recipe kept popping up as "7-Up Biscuits", and who can resist something like that, especially when all of the reviewers raved about the results?  Since I had already had good luck using Bisquick as the basis for my sweet potato biscuits, and I've used soda to cook chicken wings and turkey legs, how could this be bad?

Oh Em Gee, this is so NOT bad.  These are so damn good, I am mad at myself for not trying them earlier.  They are so good, you will throw big dinner parties as an excuse to bake big batches of these fluffy, buttery biscuits.

Spritely Southern Biscuits

• 2 cups Original Bisquick
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup Sprite or 7-Up 
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Cut the sour cream into the Bisquick. You can use a fork, knife, pastry cutter or just dive in there with your fingers.  You want to make sure that each portion of the wet ingredient gets coated with the dry, and when you are done, the dough will resemble coarse meal.  Stir in the Sprite.  The dough is going to be very soft and sticky.

This is where I like to put a nice big piece of aluminum foil on the counter.  Sprinkle about 1/2 cup of Bisquick on the foil, and also flour your hands with a little more of the Bisquick.  Roll the dough onto the foil, and begin to knead the dough, folding it over a few times, until it has incorporated the additional Bisquick and is no longer sticky.  You can add a little more Bisquick, but not too much, and do not overwork the dough.  Pat the dough out, and cut biscuits using a round biscuit cutter. Or, pat the dough into a square, a little smaller than the baking pan and then cut the dough into nine squares.

While the oven is preheating, place the butter in an 8 or 9 inch square pan, and slide the pan in to melt.  Watch it carefully so the butter doesn't burn.  Place the cut biscuits on top of the melted butter, and bake for 12 -15 minutes until the top is light brown.

You can eat these plain, or with more butter, or with jelly, or (best of all) with honey.  Honey is amazing stuff, and its flavor changes depending on what kind of flowers the bees land on, and where those flowers are located.  Wildflower honey from Tennessee tastes quite different from wildflower honey out of Georgia.  Orange blossom honey, my go-to cooking honey, has a taste unique to Florida.  I'm still in mourning for that almost full jar of black sage honey I dropped on the floor a few months ago.  There just hasn't been time for a trip to Savannah and a visit to the Savannah Bee Company on West Broughton Street to replace it. But I've used wildflower and clover honeys on these biscuits, and I drank coffee and I was happy.