What’s a chocolate biscuit?

Chocolate & Biscuit

Chocolate and biscuits are a great southern tradition and my Granny made the best in the world! Ask any of her kids, grandkids or greatgrandkids and chocolate biscuits will be among their favorite memories. My Granny made biscuits every morning, usually with gravy. Occasionally the stray family member dropped by andmade use of the egg skillet to fry themselves an egg then pulled a chair up to the dining room table. But come Saturday Granny could count on a rambunctious assortment of progeny to “drop” by for chocolate & biscuits. My Grandpa loved to shock and horrify young mothers by giving the grandbabies theirfirst taste of chocolate. Grandpa thought baby food was child abuse and every three month old was ready for a chicken leg so certainly they could eat chocolate biscuits?!?

How to eat this delight? For the littlest children granny would spoon the chocolate into a saucer. add a pat of butter then mash the butter in with a fork. After mixing the chocolate and butter you add crumbled biscuit and serve to a very appreciative tot. This also works with Karo in place of chocolate.

For the more mature & refined- place open biscuit on plate, add a pat of butter to each side and spoon the chocolate over the top. YUM!

Now. What did granny do with the leftover biscuit dough? Fried biscuits of course!

Fried Biscuit

Granny and her biscuits hold so many of my childhood memories. As long as any of us can remember Granny mixed her biscuits in a glass bowl that lived on the bottom shelf of her pantry. After Grandpa died and Granny was no longer able to care for herself we packed up her home and moved her into my mothers house. During the packing we came to the glass biscuit bowl, we tried to wash off the years of flour stuck in the cracks of the bowl. We soaked and scrubbed but never did get to the bottom but we did get far enough to see that there was a beautiful cut glass bowl underneath all that flour. This bowl was a wedding gift from her father and was the only thing she saved from a fire that burned her bridal home. Granny passed away when I was in the hospital before Mercy was born and her now holds a place of honor in a curio cabinet in our living room and, yes, it still has flour in the cracks.

Did you ever notice how many sweet memories involve food and the family meal table? God didn’t have to give us taste buds but he did. Here at the Riley house we strive to make the most of the gift of taste! Thank you for allowing us to share that love with you.

And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.

Acts 2: 46-47

Christy Riley

Emma’s mom