year of bread 5&6/50: nestle tollhouse, betty crocker, and clabber girl

I used to watch Saved by the Bell while getting ready for school in the mornings, when I was in elementary school.  Reruns came on at 7 am, for some strange reason.  My absolute favorite episode was the one where the whole gang starts a business making spaghetti sauce, from Screech's grandmother's secret family recipe.  Their business really takes off, and eventually it comes out that the recipe was stolen by Screech's grandmother from a Betty Crocker cookbook.

There is also a similar episode of Friends, "The One with Phoebe's Cookies."  Phoebe's grandmother had an amazing chocolate chip cookie recipe.  She passed the recipe down to Phoebe, but Phoebe lost the recipe when her apartment caught on fire.  Monica's only request for a wedding gift from Phoebe is to have her grandmother's recipe.  Phoebe has one single cookie left made from the recipe, hiding out in her freezer (I guess it wasn't damaged in the fire?).  So she gives the cookie to Monica, and Monica bakes batch after batch after batch of cookies trying to figure out the recipe, but she fails.  Eventually Phoebe says that the recipe originated from her great-great grandmother from France, Nestle Tollhouse (say it with a French accent!).  Of course, Monica recognizes this as the brand Nestle Toll House, hands a bag of chocolate chips to Phoebe and has her read the recipe on the back of the bag, which it turns out, is her "grandmother's recipe."

No, my grandmother doesn't have a secret family biscuit recipe (that would be pretty cool, actually).  But after seeing a biscuit recipe on the back of the Clabber Girl baking powder when scouring the pantry for Saturday morning breakfast ideas, I decided to take a cue from Screech's and Phoebe's grandmothers and try it out.  There's a reason why they make an effort to put those recipes directly on the packaging, you know, and a reason why fictional grandmothers steal them and call them family secrets: they are really good!

On Saturday morning, I made these with unbleached, all-purpose flour.  On Sunday, I tried them again but with whole wheat flour (I added 1 Tbsp. gluten to the flour).  The result with both was delicious!  The whole wheat ones are a healthier given the extra fiber, so next time I'll either make the whole wheat version again, or do a 1/2 and 1/2 version.  I also used soy milk and vegan butter substitute since that's what I keep on hand.  And I cut them in an endearing heart shape since we're getting close to Valentine's Day!  And the fabric for my sewing project matched my plate, so that became my backdrop.  Thanks, Clabber Girl.  Maybe I'll start claiming this as my secret family biscuit recipe.