Dried Fruit Breakfast Biscuits

When I get bored, I bake. This usually involves taking my stand-by biscuit recipe and doing strange and unusual things to it. Sometimes, the results are great (this recipe and the Cheese and Tomato Sauce Biscuits, for example) and other time, they're an abysmal flop (when I tried to add cocoa powder). These came out rather well, I think, and so I'm sharing the recipe. They're kind of like scones, but don't quite qualify.

Dried Fruit Breakfast Biscuits

Ingredients

2 C flour (plus a little extra)
1 T plus ¼ t. baking powder
1/3 C cooking oil
2/3 C milk (plus a little extra) - not skim, preferably
2-3 T honey (Or more, or less, to suit your taste.)
3 handfuls dried fruit (or so. I'm guessing my handfuls came to a total of about ¾ C) Use raisins, craisins, dried apricots, etc. Don't use super dry things like banana chips.
1 egg (beaten)

Preheat oven to 450º F.

Mix flour and baking soda and about half of your fruit in a large mixing bowl. Add milk and oil. Don't add it all at once; it'll make stirring everything until well-blended easier. Instead, pour about half in, then add the rest so you can get the stuff that hides at the bottom. Much easier in the long run.

Add the egg and the honey and the rest of your fruit and stir until it's all thoroughly mixed together. The dough is probably a bitch to handle at this point, so add flour bit by bit until it's manageable. If you're concerned about it becoming too dry, throw more milk in.

When it's not so sticky that touching it will leave your hand covered in goop, turn the whole business on to wax paper and knead it a couple time. If the wax paper rips, consider it done. Turn on to floured surface or more wax paper. Roll with rolling pin (flour the rolling pin or the dough will stick to it and make a mess) until it's all ½ inch thick. Cut with a round cookie cutter. I used one with a 3" diameter. Aim for the big side, because the fruit will make smaller biscuits fall apart.

Place biscuits at least an inch apart (and preferably closer to 2, but you have some wiggle room on that) on lightly greased cookie sheet and bake for about 12-15 minutes. Once they start getting a bit golden brown, turn off the oven, crack open the door and let them cook in the residual heat for another 3-5 minutes.

I don't know how many this actually makes. I forgot to count when I put these in the oven and by the time I remembered to count again, several had been eaten.

Note: This recipe is based on one from my mother's ancient Betty Crocker cookbook and started out with only the flour, baking soda, oil and milk. I've obviously adapted it quite a bit so feel free to muck about with this recipe to your heart's content. Nuts, vanilla, whatever. Go crazy. If anything works out particularly well, please let me know, because I'd love to hear about it! :)