My eastern Kentucky beekeeper granddad introduced us to the proper topping for biscuits. Honeycomb loaded with honey dropped onto a generous pat of butter on the plate, then mashed up real good and messy with a fork. Grab the hot biscuit as soon as Nanny has it out of the oven, break it open, and slather the butter-honey mash onto the biscuit with the fork. Be sure to lick the fork when yer done, and wipe the last of the mixture off your plate with half of the last biscuit that you just got told to share with your sister.

Be sure to use all-purpose and not bread flour for biscuits. We prefer the taste of biscuits made with butter rather than shortening at our house. If I want flakey biscuits, I cut it into the flour until it is about pea-sized, as Ebbie said. If I want fluffy, I cut it in until the texture is like a very coarse cornmeal.

I don't add sugar to regular biscuits, but make a "shortcake" when strawberries are in by adding 2 or 3 tablespoons of sugar to the recipe and using cream for the liquid instead of milk. BTW, U-Pick signs have popped up all over the county this past week. I know what I am doing Saturday morning.

There is a restaurant in town that guards two recipes very closely. One is for their strawberry vinaigrette. The other is for their marvelous small scones. They are on the sweet side and I love the texture of them. They hint at the texture of shortbread without being the least bit dry.



Dani taught me to make scones, and I follow her instructions to freeze the butter then grate it into the flour. However, Dani and I have very different ideas regarding the proper taste and texture of scones, and I don't particularly favor her recipe. (People used to mob our shared booth at the farmers market to snap them up, so plenty of people share her taste.) She likes moist scones with a texture very close to that of a fluffy biscuit. I like scones that are closer to a shortbread texture.   I have not yet found a short scone recipe that is not too dry. I'm not afraid to tinker with a recipe, but have never been able to come close to the scones made by that local restaurant.