Didn't learn it when I was a little girl

About once every five years, I try again to make biscuits. I don't mean the kind that pops out of a can and I don't mean drop biscuits (the kind I make several times a month). No, for some reason I've got the insane idea that I should be able to learn how to put together ingredients, cut biscuits in circles, and have them come out looking something like the ones at Bob Evans. Or something close.

Apparently, this is a basic skill, so basic that it's assumed of every good cook. The problem is that I was never taught this one when I was a little girl, and apparently my mother doesn't know it either.

So this morning, to make things simpler, I got out the Pioneer Baking Mix and the milk and tried again. And I got the usual result: A big, adhesive, gooey mass that sticks to everything, refuses to stay together, and definitely cannot be cut into circles.

The drop biscuits were delicious.

Late-breaking

Somehow I'm obsessed with this. I watched three or four YouTube videos on making biscuits. None of them showed an adhesive gloppy mess—all of the dough appeared to be fairly smooth, dry, rounded stuff that could be handled. The presenters could actually pick it up off the table.

I'm wondering. Is this one of those recipes that simply cannot be cut in half? Have all of my various attempts (different brands of premix, different cookbook from-scratch recipes) specified far too much liquid?

I did get the idea that, like meringue, the specific requirements are incredibly fussy and precise—and something one only learns by trial-and-error over dozens of tries. Cooks.com, usually a storehouse of reliable, matter-of-fact recipes, launched instead into sort of a mystical essay filled with "perhaps" and "maybe." So here's where I am:

• The temperature of the shortening is extremely important. It should either be very cold or room temperature, depending on the teacher one is following. Apparently this eliminates Pioneer from the race, because the shortening and the rest of the ingredients will always be the same temperature.
• I didn't use a pastry blender, and that's a mistake. Most of the recipes demand one of those.
• I was supposed to have cut the shortening in until it was the size of peas. Or maybe the size of rice. Or maybe smaller. Depends on the recipe. Certainly, the boxed mix won't allow me to do anything like that, so another reason it won't work.
• Apparently it's a big deal to make a cup-shaped depression in the middle of the dry ingredients and put all the liquid in there at once. I simply dumped it in. That's another reason for today's failure. I was only working with a cup and a half of dry ingredients, so I didn't really have room for that cup-shaped hole.
• One thing I did get right was that I avoided handling the sticky, gloppy mess too much. Only the old 1933 Bisquick recipe says to "Beat dough hard for 30 seconds to make it tighten up enough to handle." The rest seem terrified of any excess handling. I didn't twist my cutter either, but I was working with something that resembled a combination of Elmer's glue and white cake frosting.
• It was a little frustrating to see the serene lady picking up the neat rounds from her cutting board and laying them deftly on the cookie sheet. My biscuits were a lot more like yesterday's chocolate chip cookies. When I could get a spatula under them to lift them, they pretty much wadded up.

Tomorrow's another day. I'll measure out some Crisco tonight and put it in the fridge. Tomorrow I'll go with the chilled shortening option. Then the next day I'll try the warm one.