I like convenience foods, but despise their inconvenient packaging. Seriously, it seems like the quicker you can have it, the more packaging it comes with. If it takes 10 minutes before you can eat it, the packaging has two items {box and inner plastic wrapper}; 5 minutes or less will give you three items {box, wrapper, and plastic tray}; under 1 minute and you have a slew of waste {bag, box, wrapper, napkins, packets, cup, lid, straw – Oy!}. Cooking from scratch eliminates a lot of unnecessary waste, but it is also a lot of work and takes way more time than we’ve come accustomed to. Sometimes I just want to get dinner on the table fast, you know?
That’s why I love Bisquick. A little milk, maybe an egg, and you can turn it into a myriad of things. It’s great that Bisquick comes in a cardboard box that can be recycled or worm food, but it also has that damn plastic bag inside the box. Ugh. So, what’s a green girl to do? Make her own, of course!
The whole idea of this stuff was to be quick, right? Right. Forget the pastry blender and pull out the food processor if you’ve got one. Dump everything in and hit the button. Done. Okay not exactly. I have a 14 cup capacity food processor. Or so it says. Even though this recipe only calls for 8 cups of flour, I do not and cannot put all 8 cups in at once. That’s half a batch in that picture up there. No need to get all technical and try to measure out half of a third of a cup. Fill the whole third cup and only dump half in per batch. The rest is easy to split. I started out by only making half a batch, but once Mister caught wind that he could use my baking mix for his weekend “daddy cakes” I had to up the ante.
Yes, my sugar is brown. That’s because I use evaporated cane juice that I can buy in bulk at my local food coop. It is far less refined than the snow-white stuff you find at the supermarket. The color may be a bit off-putting at first, but it tastes just like sugar I assure you. I buy my flour, salt, and baking soda in bulk there too, so the only packaging I have for this recipe is from my shortening. Which unfortunately comes in a plastic tub. Life can’t be perfect. I do however get several batches of baking mix from one tub of shortening. I like Spectrum Organic All Vegetable Shortening. It’s non-hydrogenated, vegan, kosher, and gluten free. You use it just like conventional shortening. Enough chewing the fat. So, what does a coarse meal look like anyway?
Crumbly, but clumpy. Does that make sense? Once you have it this consistency you’re done. Store it for a quick batch of pancakes {or, “daddy cakes” depending on who’s making breakfast}, waffles, too, easy-peasy biscuits, pizza dough, even pot pie crust! Which is what I did for dinner.
Drop me a line if you would like the recipe for any of these. Just click CONTACT in the footer bar. Otherwise enjoy!
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