Tea Room Recipe #15 - 1928-style Orange Biscuits

If you're interested in a fun new breakfast or snack treat to go with your tea, may I recommend to you these Orange Biscuits?

I found this recipe in the 1928 booklet "Famous Tea Rooms and Their Famous Recipes," which was published by The Best Foods, Inc. Some of the tea rooms featured are the Mary Helen in Hollywood, Calif., the Brick Oven Tavern in Boston, Mass., the Lafayette Grill in Jacksonville, Fla. and the Patio Royal in New Orleans, La.

These biscuits are tasty, yes, especially with that surprise bit of sugar in the middle, but making them is just fun! You briefly soak a sugar cube in orange juice and then press it down into your biscuit dough.

You need to do this pretty quickly, because as you can see here with the biscuits at right, the sugar dissolves into the biscuit almost immediately.

Now I would say that you can try this flavor trick with your own favorite biscuit recipe, but here's the one from the book.

Orange Biscuits

4 cups bread flour (I used Swans Down)
3 tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup shortening
1-3/4 cups milk
Sugar cubes
Orange juice
Orange rind, grated

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt, then cut in shortening with a pastry blender. Add enough milk to make a soft dough. Roll out and cut into 1/2-inch-thick round biscuits. Place on greased baking sheet close together. Dip sugar cubes one at a time into orange juice and press into biscuit. Sprinkle orange rind over biscuits and bake for about 15 minutes. Yields 24 biscuits.