This is a DIY mix for baking powder biscuits. It can also be used for great soup dumplings.
It’s based on a depression-era recipe, when salt, sugar and cooking fats were expensive. That also just happens to make it a far healthier recipe than many other DIY biscuit mixes you will see going around.
This mix is great to have on hand when bread is short, or when you want something warm and hearty on a blustery day.
The biscuits are really low-calorie and low-fat, but still moist.
As usual with baking powder biscuits, best served hot or at least the same day.
To be clear, this is NOT a canning recipe. Do not attempt to can soups with dumplings made from this. It would be unsafe, not to mention unpalatable. Add dumplings to your home canned soup while re-warming it.
The recipe
Yield: 14 cups / 2.5 kg of dry mix. Enough for 14 x half-dozen batches of biscuits (84 biscuits in total.)
Each 1 cup ( 175 g) mix batch makes 6 biscuits.
Baking Powder Biscuit DIY Mix
A DIY mix for healthy lower-fat, low-salt homemade biscuits. Yet, you still get fluffy biscuits!
Ingredients
- 1.5 kg flour (10 cups / 3 1/3 lbs)
- 7 tablespoons baking powder
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 100 g powdered milk (instant. 1 cup / 3.5 oz) [regular or buttermilk powder]
- 175 g shortening (1 cup / 6 oz)
Instructions
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Mix all dry ingredients well (the flour down to and including the powdered milk.)
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Cut the shortening in finely.
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Store in a sealed container, jar or bag in a cool, dark place. For best storage, refrigerator is recommended.
Usage notes
To make 6 biscuits: Take 175 g (1 cup) of mix and put it in a bowl. Add 1/3 to 1/2 cup (up to 125 ml / 3 to 4 oz) of water. Stir just to moisten thoroughly. (Don’t knead, you don’t want gluten starting to develop with this.)
Start oven heating to 175 C / 350 F. Place an oven rack away from bottom heat grid, so that your bottoms don’t overcook on you.
Roll-out on a lightly floured surface to about 2 cm (1/2 inch) thick.
Fold rolled-out dough in on itself in half or in thirds, and roll out again to same thickness.
Repeat for about 4 or 5 times — there’s no set rule. This creates the layers that will flake up.
Cut into 6 biscuits with a sharp knife or biscuit cutter, place on ungreased, unheated baking sheet.
Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until lightly browned.
Best served hot or warm.
Tip: Many old-timers swear that it’s best to place the cut biscuits in the pan slightly touching each other. That allows them to use each other as support and rise higher.
Options:
- To each batch, you could add a handful of a grated cheese such as cheddar or Swiss, etc.
- You could also sweeten a batch with a few teaspoons of sugar (before adding water) to make a batch into more of a tea biscuit.
- You could use buttermilk powder in the mix if you wanted.
- Can you use whole wheat flour? You could try mixing up a small portion of a mix batch, using up to 50% whole wheat flour, and see what success you have.
Dumplings
Makes about a dozen medium-sized dumplings.
Take 175 g (1 cup) of mix and put it in a bowl. Add about 1/2 cup (125 ml) of water. (Tip! You want the dough looser than for biscuits, even a bit “wet”, or you won’t get a good rise on the dumplings.) Stir just to moisten thoroughly. (Don’t knead, you don’t want gluten starting to develop with this.)
Divide into about 12 pieces, and add to your fully cooked soup or stew. Cook covered 15 minutes, on a low simmer.
If adding to home-canned soup, heat the home-canned soup to a gentle boil first in a saucepan before adding the dumplings, then lower the heat before adding the raw dumplings and simmer covered for 15 minutes.
Cobbler Topping
Makes a generous cobber topping for a 20 x 20 cm or 23 x 23 cm (8 x 8″ or 9 x 9″) pan.
Cobblers can be either sweet or savoury.
If making a savoury vegetable cobber, omit the sweetener, and consider adding some herbs and / or grated cheese instead.
- 350 g (2 cups / 12 oz) of mix
- 2 tablespoons butter (optional)
- 100 g sugar (1/3 cup / 3 oz) OR 1 teaspoon liquid stevia (for sweet dessert cobblers)
- Grated cheese, dried herbs to taste (optional – for vegetable cobblers)
- 250 ml milk, cream or water (1 cup / 8 oz)
Take 350 g (2 cups) of mix and put it in a bowl. If using sugar (or another dry sweetener such as Splenda, etc), mix in now. If a richer topping is desired, now cut in 1 to 2 tablespoons of shortening, butter or marg.
If using a liquid sweetener, mix it now into your baking liquid.
Add the milk (or cream, or water). NOTE: you might not need all of it, so add just three-quarters of it at once.
Dollop on top your cobbler filling.
The topping itself will take 20 to 25 minutes to bake and be done. You’ll need to figure out the timing on that compared to the filling — your filling (particularly a vegetable one) might need some cooking on its own first.
Tip: you can mix a few tablespoons of powdered milk into the water to use as the baking liquid.
Recipe source
Nova Scotian family hand-written recipe book collection, ultimate source unknown.
Nutrition
Per 1 biscuit / one-sixth of a batch made up.
- 76 calories, 102 mg sodium
- Weight Watchers PointsPlus®: 2 points+ per biscuit (2 SmartPoints)
For dumplings, Weight Watchers SmartPoints®: 1 point per dumpling
(Nutritional info based on using salt — you can lower the sodium to 20 mg per biscuit by using instead a salt sub such as Herbamare Sodium – Free . Salt is not needed chemically to make this recipe work; it is present as a seasoning.)
Nutrition info provided by MyFitnessPal.
* PointsPlus™ calculated by healthycanning.com. Not endorsed by Weight Watchers® International, Inc, which is the owner of the PointsPlus® registered trademark.
Can you replace the shortning with bacon grease?
You could try a small batch and see if you like the results.