Crystal’s Chocolate Gravy for Biscuits
Posted by Ben | Under Desserts, Lick The Plate Clean Recipes Monday Aug 25, 2008… from the kitchen of Donna Engle Godfrey
CRYSTAL’S CHOCOLATE GRAVY FOR BISCUITS
1/2 cup butter
3 squares baking chocolate (semi-sweet)
1 box powered sugar
1 can evaporated milk
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp pure vanilla
Melt chocolate and butter on the top of a double boiler. Add the powered sugar (a few tablespoons at a time) and gradually add milk. Then, add salt and vanilla. If you let this set a few minutes it will thicken.
To me you need to serve it on Cathead Biscuits:
2 cups self rising flour
1 cup buttermilk
a lump of solid shortening the size of a walnut (butter or solid Crisco)
Put flour in large mixing bowl, form a depression in the center. Place the shortening and a little of the milk in the center and start stirring. When the shortening is blended, add the rest of the milk, mixing just until the dough forms a ball. (This dough tends to be a bit moist so don’t add flour)
Place wax paper on your counter and sprinkle with flour . Roll the dough out on the wax paper until it is about 1-1/2 inch thick. Then, cut out the biscuits. I use a cleaned tuna can that I have cut the top and bottom out of since this is bigger than my regular biscuit cutter. Cut out your biscuits and place in a greased pan. Bake at 400 degrees until biscuits are a light brown.
A tip: Bertie Lawson from Immokalee gave me this… have the biscuits touching because you want them to rise up and not spread out.
NOTE: Mrs. Godfrey’s daughter is Crystal. We were neighbors and classmates in Immokalee many 20+ years ago.
Being from Tennessee, chocolate gravy was something I grew up hearing about, but never had. My mother never made it, but others thought it was a staple. I’m glad to have a recipe for it. “Cathead” biscuits - another southern term - love that!
I suspect the term “cathead” biscuit came about because once you take a biscuit out of the required round tin cake pan (which you’ve greased with the lard or shortening on your hand after scooping some out for the biscuit — efficient cooks, we Southerners), they’re shaped rather like a cathead, big and slightly flat and triangular. They’d be referred to as “puny” otherwise.
My uncle used to insist they’d kill you.
He’d usually tell it to the kids at the table who hadn’t been in on this joke.
“Shore enough,” he’d say. “You set a biscuit with figs on top of your head, and your tongue will beat your brains out to git to it.”
That joke makes me laugh all over myself to this day!!!
He’s near right, though: My Aunt Eleanor’s biscuits were uniquely wonderful and the fig preserves and their syrup, perfection when matched with them.