Drop Biscuits (Ah, Not on the Floor!)

Ingredients for 15 biscuits

2 cups flour
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup melted butter (to cut down on the butter, use 1/4 cup butter + 1/4 cup canola oil)*
1 cup milk (room temperature)

Heat the oven to 450 (F). Sift the dry ingredients together, then add the butter (butter/oil) and milk. Mix lightly, do not work the dough. Let dough sit for just a couple of minutes after mixing, to allow the dough to absorb the liquid. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Put heaping tablespoons of the dough onto the baking sheet in little mounds. Bake 12 to 15 minutes on center oven rack (time depending upon your oven; mine take about 15 minutes), until they just brown ever so slightly, but you don't want the bottoms to get too browned and hardened.

* Hopefully, the "Biscuit Police" won't nab you, although you should be on the lookout for guys who look like the "Pillsbury Doughboy," but in blue uniforms, with a badge reading, "Biscuit Police!" And yes, you can poke them in the tummy and they'll giggle. 

WORD HISTORY
Biscuit-This word is a compound, with the "bis" part, distantly related to "two" and to "twice," going back to Indo European "dwoh/dwah/duwo," which meant "two." This gave Latin "duis," which meant, "by two, twice," with the "du" later changing to "b," in Latin; thus, "bis," meaning "twice." This became "bes" in French, a Latin-based language. The second part is related to "cook," and it goes back to Indo European "kwekwo," "perhaps" a variant form of "pekwo," which seems to have meant "to ripen;" the notion being to prepare inedible raw food until it is 'ripe;' that is, "ready to eat." This gave Old Italic "kekewo," and this gave Latin "coquus,"with that same meaning, which gave Latin "coquere," meaning "to cook," which then formed "cocere," which then formed "cuire," meaning "to cook." The combined parts gave Old French "bescuire" and its participle form, bescuit," was also used as a noun, meaning, "twice cooked/baked bread." This was borrowed by English from French as "bisket" in the 1500s, but the spelling was altered in the 1800s, following the French example, which had long since changed from "bescuit" to "biscuit," influenced by the Latin spelling "bis." The British English meaning of the noun is more what in American English is called a "cookie" ("baked sweetened dough, most often flat or very slightly mounded, and with a crispy, firm or moderately firm texture"), but also a "cracker" (a thin, crispy flatbread, often with salted top). The American English meaning is, "a small rounded baked good, most often using baking soda or baking powder for leavening, with a soft, bread like texture, which is only sometimes sweetened a bit." For non-Americans, if you go into an American supermarket, there is likely to be a whole refrigerated section with various brands and types of pre-made and formed biscuit dough, which come packaged in tubes.