Quick & Easy Biscuits

Few things surpass a buttery, perfectly flaky, multi-layered biscuit. (Just check out Maria's recent bake here.) They are well worth the effort of thorough prepping -- freezing small-sized pieces of butter (perhaps even the flour as well), ensuring the liquid ingredients are sufficiently chilled, meticulously avoiding overworking the dough, using a razor sharp cutter, and only rolling the dough out once.

But.....often times, that's just waaaaaay too much work for a weekday dinner that calls for some bread, but the bread box is empty and it's already 5 o'clock. Enter these drop biscuits. A recipe so simple in technique and ingredients, you may even commit it to memory. And while they may not have those perfect layers, they are crumbly crisp on the edges and pleasantly fluffy on the inside with just the right amount of chew. It's hard to eat just one.

Ingredients:

1 stick butter
1 1/2 cup flour
2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup milk

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 400.
With a fork, mix together dry ingredients in a medium bowl.
Work butter into flour with hands or pastry cutter until it resembles a mixture of torn bread chunks and pebbles throughout the flour mixture. (So, yes, you want some bigger pieces and some smaller pieces. About half & half.)
Pour milk into flour & butter mixture. Mix together with a fork until a shaggy dough forms. (Be careful not to over mix -- a bit of flour at the bottom of the bowl is OK.)
Using two spoons, drop dough onto baking sheet. They don't grow much, so aim for the size you would like your biscuits to be. (I've made them quite large to fit a double batch on a single pan. But, it back-fired -- everyone still wanted a second even though they were generously sized.)
Bake for 15-20 min until deliciously golden brown. If you have more than one pan in the oven, rotate halfway through baking. Enjoy!

Adapted from this Serious Eats recipe.