Whole Wheat Biscuits

I took a stab at converting our favorite 'Touch of Grace' biscuits to whole wheat this weekend. My mother loves these, so we have an excuse to make them a couple times a month. Now that they're becoming a regular part of our diet, I thought it was time to make them slightly more diabetic friendly.

I've never tried to convert a recipe before, and I wasn't quite sure what the rules were for changing things up. We ended up just winging it. The recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups of white flour, and we substituted 1 cup whole wheat and 1/2 cup white instead. We've made this recipe enough that we know what the dough should look like, and that made it a lot easier. I had to add a half cup of extra milk to get it to look right. Now I know that whole wheat flour absorbs a lot more liquid.

They turned out great. Still had plenty of 'biscuit' flavor, nice and fluffy, and in no way did I feel deprived of my regular white biscuits. I'm going to try all whole wheat flour next time - and use buttermilk (we were out this weekend) because I did miss the buttermilk taste. But overall, a great experiment.

Whole Wheat "Touch of Grace" Biscuits
adapted from The South The Beautiful Cookbook

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup white flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp Splenda or sweetener of choice
3 tbsp vegetable shortening
1 1/4 - 2 cups Milk or Buttermilk
1/2 cup additional flour (any kind)
2 tbsp melted butter

Preheat oven to 500 F/ 260 C. Lightly coat an 8" pan with cooking spray.

In a medium bowl, mix the first six ingredients. Work the shortening in, forming pea sized lumps with a pastry blender or your fingers. Gently stir in milk or buttermilk until just mixed. You want add enough milk that all the flour is moist. We find we need less milk than buttermilk, but you will need at least 1 1/4 cups for the whole wheat version. This is a thick, wet, drop biscuit dough, sort of like thick muffin dough.

Let the dough stand 2-3 minutes. The dough is so wet that you cannot shape it in the usual manner. Pour the last 1/2 cup of flour into a plate and flour your hands. Spoon a biscuit sized lump of dough into the flour, and sprinkle with flour to coat it lightly. Shape the biscuit into a soft round, shaking off any excess flour. Place into the pan. Continue with the rest of the biscuits until the pan is full, or you run out of dough, pressing each biscuit as close to the others and the pan edge as possible.

Brush the biscuits with melted butter and bake 15-20 minutes until brown. Let cool for five minutes, then serve and enjoy.