Cut Rounds Revisited

British Dessert

CUT ROUNDS

INGREDIENTS

5 teaspoons baking powder
3 cups flour (1½ tablespoons more later)
¼ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons softened butter
1⅓ cups buttermilk
1 tablespoon flour (so more later)
flour to dust rolling pin, about 1 tablespoon total flour to dust pastry cutter, about ½ tablespoon total

SPECIAL UTENSILS

baking sheet
2″ round pastry cutter or cookie cutter

Makes 15. Takes 50 minutes.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Add baking powder, 3 cups flour, and salt to large mixing bowl. Mix gently with fork until well blended. Cut butter in ¼ cubes. Fold in butter cubes.

Use fist to make a well in the middle of the flour. Pour buttermilk a bit at time into well. Knead gently with hands only until dough is sticky, but doesn’t stick to hands. (Use only as much butter as is necessary. Also don’t over knead.) Dust flat surface with 1 tablespoon flour. Add dough ball to flat surface. Dust rolling pin with flour as needed. Gently roll out dough until it is ½” deep. Use pastry cutter to cut out rounds. (This is why this dessert is called cut rounds.) Dust pastry cutter with flour as needed.

Place cut rounds on baking sheet. (Don’t let them touch.) Bake in oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes or until rounds have risen and tops have turned golden brown. Rounds go well with cream and jam on them. Or put cream and jam between two cut rounds. Use clotted cream if you can get it.

TIDBITS

1) Cut rounds are round. If the jam and the cream that often go inside them were replaced with surveillance devices you could conduct a 360˚ observation. In general, enemy countries are always on the alert for our eavesdropping. But no one would ever suspect a Cut Round. It’s so yummy. So, I propose that the CIA put cameras and listening devices in Cut Rounds and leave them wherever they need to glean foreign intelligence. You could ask the CIA if they already employ Cut Rounds, but they tend not to tell the public things as it is., after all, it is a top-secret organization.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.