I think we can all agree that nothing beats the taste of homemade food, especially when it’s made with love. Most of us have family recipes passed down from generation to generation, and our goal is to keep them for as long as possible.
Aside from enjoying its familiar taste, preserving old recipes is one way of keeping the memories of our long-gone loved ones alive. Now, let’s talk about the internet’s newest favorite persona.
Pat Wilbanks, a grandmother from LaFayette, Georgia, recently became an internet sensation for sharing her family’s simple biscuit recipe. The 77-year-old clearly knows what she’s doing, for she has been making the delicious biscuits since she was 12!
On June 22, Pat shared a three-part baking tutorial on her Facebook account. The video was actually meant for her best friend’s granddaughter, who was curious about the biscuit-making process. Who knew she will become the newest persona to conquer the online world.
“My friend is down in the nursing home and when she was home living at her apartment, I would go up and fix biscuits for her and her husband,” Pat told TODAY Food.
“My daughter-in-law is a nurse and for National Nurses Day, I’d fix hundreds of biscuits for the nurses. Last time I talked to my friend, she asked me to mail the recipe to her granddaughter.”
Pat had all the ingredients on hand, but there was one problem: she has never used a recipe. And Pat knows that without specific measurements, it would be hard to teach anyone how to make them correctly.
Since she’s been making the same biscuit for decades, Pat doesn’t feel the need to take measurements; she just eyeballs the ingredients.
To help her make the recipe, she called in a favor from her grandson, Chris, who helped measure all the ingredients she used. He then wrote the measurements and filmed his grandmother’s baking demo.
The four-minute clip shows Pat preparing a batch of yummy-looking biscuits while giving directions to viewers. She demonstrated how to make eight biscuits from four everyday ingredients: flour, Crisco, buttermilk, and melted butter.
“This is not professional, but here we go!” Pat began.
Once the timer set off, Pat tested one of her freshly-baked hot biscuits and put in a chunk of butter.
“Let’s test them out. Oh, I forgot you can’t eat it, I will!” she joked. “I hope that teaches you something about biscuits.”
Within a few weeks of sharing, the video has gone viral and it made her a beloved persona in social media, earning tens of thousands of views and hundreds of comments. Many people were grateful to Pat for sharing her recipe and said they would try making her biscuits at home.
“Thank you for sharing the recipe with all of us! I felt as if I was right at home with you while you made them. I think you are a wonderful teacher and I will be making your biscuits tonight!” commented one viewer.
The grandma didn’t even know what going “viral” meant until Chris called her the next day and explained it to her. Nevertheless, she said she’s “honored and very thankful.”
“At first when somebody would make a comment on my Facebook page I would answer it. Then it just started going boom, boom, boom and I couldn’t answer everybody so I just had to put a thank you to everybody,” she told WDEF.
Pat learned this biscuit-making method from her husband’s grandmother, Rose Hawkins, who was born in 1886. She was 12 years old when she first started making them, and back in the day, the classic recipe consisted of flour, lard, and home-churned buttermilk from the family’s cow.
Today, the ingredients were replaced by readily available grocery items, such as Crisco (instead of lard). In the video, Pat noted that she preferred using the White Lily self-rising flour and a specific type of buttermilk, since “fat-free buttermilk doesn’t work all that good.”
Her new fans said they’re eager to see more cooking demos from the grandma. Lucky for them, Pat has already posted another video showing some of the dishes she’s planning to demonstrate in the future.
Watch Pat, the newest internet persona make the now-famous “Mama’s Biscuits” in the video series below.
