Cat Head Biscuits

In answer to Muddy Water's question:

Cat head biscuits are just biscuits. The name comes from the shape and size; it looks like a cat's head, minus the ears.

My mother taught me how to make biscuits when I was 7 years old. These biscuits have only three ingredients and they aren't hard to make but they do require a little finesse to get the desired size and color.

I can tell you how to make them, but I can't give you the amounts because I just don't know. I go by how it looks because that's how my mother taught me. Several years ago I tried to write the recipe down and I called my mother to ask her how much flour to use and she couldn't tell me. She thought about it for a while and gave me her best guess. So if you want to make them you'll just have to experiment.

Preheat the oven to 375. Grease a cast iron skillet with Crisco then add a little more Crisco in the mixing bowl. I use three fingers worth. I guess that's a generous tablespoon.

Shift self-rising flour into the bowl. I'm going to say 2 cups of flour. Dump more flour onto a plate. Don't bother shifting this, it's for coating purposes, not for cooking.

Add buttermilk to the shifted flour. I can't even guess how much. You want a sticky dough. I add the buttermilk slowly, mixing as I go until it feels right. An important note- it is very easy to add more buttermilk but difficult to add more flour to the mix.

Mix well. I use my hands. Dough should feel sticky and there shouldn't be any flour clinging to the bowl nor should there be any traces of milk.

Now for the messy part which is a little hard to describe. You want to pinch off a ball of dough and coat with flour, which is why you dumped some on a plate. However, you want to knock off all the excess flour. So with my left hand I grab some dough and with my right I grab flour and then I sort of juggle. I toss the dough into my right hand, add more flour with my left, then toss it back and forth until the extra falls off. Then I shape the biscuit and place it on my greased skillet.

Expect flour to go everywhere. Do not be surprised when bits of dough fall to the floor. If the Universe is conspiring against you the phone will ring as soon as you make the second biscuit. (I keep a damp rag nearby for this emergency.) I don't bother cleaning up the mess until the biscuits are in the oven.

When the biscuits are made brush the tops of them with bacon drippings or melted butter. Sometimes I use steak marinade.

Place the biscuits on the bottom oven rack. Let them cook for about 15 minutes the move to the top rack. The bottom is where the actual cooking takes place and the nice tan color occurs in the top rack. Leaving biscuits on the bottom too long makes them hard and moving them up too soon makes them chewy.

I realize this recipe is a heart attack waiting to happen. I'm sure there are healthier substitutions, I've just never wanted to mess with a good thing. I suggest making them a few times to get the technique down. Like I said before, it's not hard but it does require practice. It took a long time before mine looked right. And even though I make mine the same way my mother does, my biscuits look nothing like hers. Mine are bigger. Hers are browner. Neither mine nor Mom's looks like Granny's biscuits. It's ok, they all taste the same.