Made with basic pantry ingredients, these Baking Powder Biscuits have brought a lot of joy to my family for many years. In under an hour, you can make these easy buttery biscuits as well!

baking powder biscuits

My Mom’s Incredible Baking Powder Biscuits

My family used to own an island in Georgian Bay. We actually owned it up until last year, when we were forced to sell it after my dad’s death. As kids, my brothers and I would spend the entire summer up there, with both parents but sometimes alone with my mom, when my dad had to go back and operate during the week.

The island was entirely ours, so it was 16 acres of rock with two sandy beaches, no electricity, a board-and-batten one-floor cottage with three bedrooms and a foot-flush toilet, and no way on or off except to take the boat. Oh, and there were bugs everywhere. HUGE flying wood roaches, normal non-flying roaches, and massive carpenter ants were always inside the cottage. So were mice that would scrabble around the kitchen at night. Parts of the cottage were permanently screened-in without actual windows, so it was easy for anyone – or anything – to get into the place.

Outside, there were deer, bears, raccoons, and little red squirrels that would tease my dog for hours by sitting above her in the trees and call to her. As a child, I’d run around with no shoes on for two months, catching frogs at the bog in the middle of the island and playing with my brothers. 

The water was clear, cold, and rocky, and we swam from May to September. Storms would come over the lake like a wall of rain and rock the cabin on its stilts with bright lightning and deafening thunder.

Me and my dad (in the 70s, check out his glasses) having a swim in Georgian Bay

 

It was both the most beautiful place on earth, and the most isolated. But my family being who we were, we always ate well.

Smoked lake trout, fresh whitefish, steaks on the BBQ, marshmallows over the campfire. And in the morning, my mom would make her baking powder biscuits. When I was a little girl, I’d help her pat down the dough and cut round biscuits out with the edge of a glass. When they were done, I’d eat three or four. I could never get enough. She never made them in the city, but at the cottage, we always got biscuits. Buttery, crispy, fluffy, and hot, they were incredible.

These baking powder biscuits are the epitome of comfort and happiness for me at least, and I’m passing this recipe – and some comfort and happiness – on to you during this time. 

You can add grated cheese to the recipe, which my mom did often. 

My mom tells me to tell you that according to my grandmother, “a slightly wet dough makes biscuits fluffy.”

These aren’t multi-layered Southern-style biscuits, FYI. They’re more like a drop biscuit. And they’re buttery AF. 

Ingredients for Fluffy Biscuits

 

  • All-Purpose Flour: bleached or unbleached if fine
  • Milk: for this recipe, I prefer to use whole milk
  • Butter: the best part about this is that you don’t have to wait for room temperature butter. Just grab the stick straight from the fridge! Be sure to use unsalted butter.
  • Baking Powder
  • Pinch Salt

 

How To Make These Drop Biscuits

 

  • Preheat oven to 375F
  • Place the flour, baking powder, and salt into a large bowl and mix to combine
  • Cut the butter into small pieces into the flour mixture
  • Using your hands, mix the butter into the flour until the mixture looks like pea-sized crumbs
  • Add the milk and stir lightly until mixture forms a sticky dough
  • Turn dough out onto a floured surface and pat down to 1/2-inch thick
  • Cut biscuits out of the dough with a glass and place on buttered baking sheet
  • Bake at 375F for around 20 minutes or until golden brown.

 

Tips on Making the Best Baking Powder Biscuits

  • Don’t worry about spacing out the baking powder biscuits too much on your baking sheet as they do not expand too much while baking.
  • You don’t need any fancy equipment or cutters for this biscuit recipe – I literally use a glass cup to cut out the biscuit dough and mix by hand.
  • Serve warm with some jam, butter, or just eat it as is!
  • If you have a box grater, you can grate cold/frozen butter into your mix instead of cutting it up.
  • After cutting out the biscuits, you can rework the leftover dough back together and cut out more biscuits.
  • How to make biscuits without baking powder? Self-rising flour is an option but this recipe was tested for baking powder.
  • Make this cheesy by grating a handful of cheese into the dough and mixing it in.

baking powder biscuit recipe

baking powder biscuits  baking powder biscuits

 

My Mom's Incredible Baking Powder Biscuits

These baking powder biscuits have brought our family a lot of joy over the years. Enjoy!

Course: Breakfast
Cuisine: American
Keyword: biscuit
Servings: 10 Biscuits
Ingredients
  • 2 Cups All-purpose flour
  • 1 Cup Milk
  • 1/2 Cup Cold butter (1 stick)
  • 1 Tablespoon Baking Powder
  • Pinch Salt
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 375F

  2. Place the flour, baking powder, and salt into a large bowl and mix to combine

  3. Cut the butter into small pieces into the flour mixture

  4. Using your hands, mix the butter into the flour until the mixture looks like pea-sized crumbs

  5. Add the milk and stir lightly until mixture forms a sticky dough

  6. Turn dough out onto a floured surface and pat down to 1/2-inch thick

  7. Cut biscuits out of the dough with a glass and place on buttered baking sheet

  8. Bake at 375F for around 20 minutes or until golden brown.

  9. DEVOUR!!