When you are in England, you might be offered a biscuit with your cup of tea. (Say yes!) It will be what we call a cookie in the USA!
The above photo shows you the VIP cargo that we brought back last September. See the custard creams? Those are some excellent biscuits!
Biscuits here in America! Bread made with wheat flour, they should be light and fluffy with a nice crust. Best to make them with buttermilk, that is how my Dad makes them.
Homemade buttermilk biscuits made by my Dad are the best, truly they are. He makes them in a very old black iron skillet. (See it at the back of the stove?) And he bakes them at 500 degrees! Boy, I am telling you...these taste wonderful!
This past Thanksgiving we had a big crowd, so my Dad made a lot of biscuits! He used four black skillets (different sizes) to do so, and hey, why not just stack them all in four tiers? Looks good, yes? (The large one on top is what he calls a "hoe cake". If there is a very large biscuit in the middle, that is a cat head biscuit.)
My Dad turned 90 on Monday of this week! He asked my sister for a CD by George Jones. One of the songs is "I Don't Need No Rocking Chair". That's my choice for this post!
Wishing your Dad many, many happy returns of the day! How i wish i could come learn some of his cooking secrets.
ReplyDeleteHere, I can give you one of his secrets...put onion in your cornbread! He did it when we were kids and we loved it so, he has made it that way ever since! (Except he has to make a smaller pan for one of my brothers who doesn't like onions. That's my Dad for you!)
DeleteWhat a good haul of sweets you have! Yummy. I think I'd love that Yorkshire tea and any anything with the word 'shortbread' in it. Homemade buttermilk biscuits! Yes, please. Just send them right over :)
ReplyDeleteYour dad is adorable. Happy birthday to him. Wishing him many more!
Thanks, Martha for your good wishes!
DeleteYes! Most of those things on that table were given to our son or to friends, but the Yorkshire tea was for us! That and the Custard Creams for me and the Snickers and gluten free biscuits for Richard!
Happy Birthday to your biscuit baking dad. I love that he bakes them in a skillet. I have never done that with biscuits but use one for my cornbread. I may have to try the biscuits in it next time.
ReplyDeleteHope you have a wonderful night- xo Diana
Oh yes, he also uses his iron skillets for his cornbread too! Only he puts onion in his cornbread, VIDALIA onions if he can! You are known for your cheese from Wisconsin but from Georgia, we are famous for our onions from Vidalia! :-)
DeleteHappy Birthday to your Dad! That's the perfect song for him!
ReplyDeleteI thought it was perfect for him too, but I will share another one from George Jones that he really wanted to hear!
DeleteHappy birthday to your sweet Dad! I love that he's a biscuit master chef! When we get kiddos in surgery that are a bit chubby we always say "well, here's a little biscuit eater!"
ReplyDeleteYou can't eat too many of them, they are fattening!
DeleteOh poor little kids going into surgery, God bless them.
I have been making homemade biscuits for as long as I can remember. They are so much better than store bought.
ReplyDeleteI bet you make good ones too! Do you roll them out or cut them out? My Dad rolls his out and it is amazing to see him do this, very delicately and precisely.
DeleteI roll them out and then cut them. The last one is shaped gently by hand so I don't lose any dough.
DeleteI know we have been talking about your biscuits and what biscuits are in England before, but I can't remember whether your bread-type biscuits are sweet or savoury, and how people eat them - with cheese? jam? honey? on their own? tea? coffee?
ReplyDeleteI hope your Dad had a great day for his 90th birthday!!!
How do people eat them? Let's see...you can split them open with a knife and put honey and jam or jelly on them. (Jelly is a like a thinner jam in America, in England jelly is gelatin!) You may eat them with any kind of drink, really! You may put a round breakfast sausage inside and it is a sausage biscuit, a ham slice makes it a ham biscuit, put fried egg and cheese and it is a egg/cheese biscuit...you get the idea! The fast food chains caught on to this...at one one time, these kind of biscuits were not sold restaurants but now, almost all of them have them! Of course, they are not as good as my Dad's!
DeleteThey are a bread, and not sweet at all!
Thanks for the well wishes for my Dad!!
Happy Birthday to your Dad! Great biscuits - all of them!
ReplyDeleteThank you! Can you tell I adore biscuits in either country? :-)
DeleteThose biscuits make your teeth fall out!
ReplyDeleteWhat? I can't hear you, my teeth are falling out!
DeleteI admit that I love both types of biscuits :-) No wonder I can't lose weight. My mamaw in Tenn. made them (and almost everything) in iron skillets. I think the rule was to never wash those skillets. I found some proper English cookies....ummmm... biscuits at Kroger and have them with my Earl Gray tea while savoring my memories of England. Happy birthday to your Dad!
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely, you can't eat too many! My Dad just wipes the iron skillets out, and uses them and uses them! (He does wash them sometimes but you MUST get every drop of water out of them!) Richard found some English cookies at Kroger too! The best thing, that chocolate from England that they were covered in!!
DeleteHappy Birthday to your Dad - 90 is a great age, and he is fantastic. His biscuits look amazing. We don't have them here, the closest thing being a scone, but it is made differently, not in a skillet. English biscuits are delicious. Yum - you are making my mouth wateR!
ReplyDeleteYou are making me wish I had a cheese scone right now!!
DeleteThe texture is very different, my Dad's biscuit is very, very light but with a nice crisp crust. I love them both!
I still don't fully understand what a biscuit in America is. It almost looks like what we would call a dumpling. I suppose it doesn't really matter what they are though, as long as they taste great.
ReplyDeleteYou can take the same dough and make them into dumplings by placing them into hot chicken broth, and if you know how to do this just right, they are wonderful!
DeleteFirstly, a very Happy Birthday to your Dad. :)
ReplyDeleteSecondly, I love the music by the late, great George Jones.
Thirdly...what biscuits are in The States are similar to what we call "scones" here in the Land of Oz and in the UK.
Hey Lee! Thank you!
DeleteSee my answer above to a fellow blogger from Australia!
I remember seeing plates of scones on the seafront at a cafe, the scones with raisins...there were tons of those but the plate of cheese scones...EMPTY!
Come on, England, make more cheese scones!! :-)
Well, first of all a very Happy Birthday to your dad - 90 years! That is quite an accomplishment! And then on to the biscuits - I love them all, the British cookies and the flaky American biscuits. Reading your post sure made me hungry... xoxo Silke
ReplyDeleteThanks, Silke! You know BOTH biscuits, like me and love them! :-)
DeleteHappy Birthday to your Dad! Think he'd share his recipe for those biscuits! My but they do look good !
ReplyDeleteI need to make a video of him making them and post it on here. You have given me a great idea! Thank you! x
DeleteHappy Birthday to your Dad, he definitely doesn't need a rocking chair. Nothing better than homemade biscuits.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I know you know both kinds of biscuits too!
DeleteI hope your dad's birthday is very happy!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Lynn, it was!!
DeleteYour Dad sounds like quite a character and I can see the mischief in his face as he chuckles about those inferior biscuits! Belated birthday greetings to the old fellow!
ReplyDeleteHello YP Man!
DeleteYes, you can see the mischief in his face, can't you? He is quite a character, I promise you that!
Thanks very much for your well wishes!
By the way, I love Yorkshire Pudding too, along with Toad In The Hole!
Happy Birthday to your sweet biscuit making dad! Growing up, we never wanted the cat head biscuits, we wanted the ones on the side of the pan that got a little crispy around the edges.
ReplyDeleteI know, I want the ones with the crispy crusts! x
DeleteJust as well you are not in the European Union as there was a big kerfuffle/fight a few years ago over Jaffa Cakes you might remember- are they classed as a cake or a biscuit- and they were tiny compared to your Dad's work. A large amount of extra money risked being forked out if they were classed as real cakes but luckily they kept the 'biscuit' tag as they were the size of the one your father is holding up and as slim as a finger so you could fit a dozen inside each pack.
ReplyDeleteHappy birthday to your Dad and the big sized biscuits over there.
Jaffa Cakes! That was one of the first things that our son would look for when we visited his grandparents in England! Seems to me that they have gotten smaller over the years or is that my imagination? Similar thing happened here to the cans of "Pork and Beans"...really, it was just a tiny piece of pork fat that was in the beans, but in the end, they kept it on the label as it was, best not to confuse us poor Americans any more than we already are! :-)
DeleteThanks for the well wishes for my Dad. Wish I could send you some of his biscuits, they are the BEST.
Yes, nearly everything with chocolate in it is smaller now. Mars Bars, Jaffa cakes,and Crunchie Bars have all lost size and weight in the last few years.
ReplyDeleteIf only I could lose size and weight when I EAT chocolate! LOL
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