Maple Swirl Biscuits

This week made me smile. On Wednesday, we had the first snow (that stuck) of the season. In Colorado, it is basically a law that it has to snow around Halloween; I think there has been one year out of the nine that I have lived here where it didn’t snow the week or the day of Halloween. We ended up getting about five inches of snow over night and the very next morning, we had about a two hour power outage at the school, you can imagine how fun that was.

Anyways, even though I love the snow, I hate being out in the cold and getting wet. I have poor blood circulation in my body which causes me to be cold 24/7 (even when it’s 90 degrees outside). I would much rather stay in my PJs, curled up on the couch with a blanket around me, sitting by the fire and watching the snow drift down from the sky. So, while my sister was out playing in the snow and making a fantastic looking snowman, I was making these Maple Swirl Biscuits.

I realized the other day that I make way too many recipes from the internet and not enough from my magazines and cookbooks; I think they feel neglected. In order for my books and magazines to feel more loved, I will be baking from them more often. These biscuits came from Better Homes and Gardens Fall Baking 2011 magazine. I have bookmarked so many recipes in this thing, it’s ridiculous. These biscuits don’t have any wacky ingredients so you don’t have to run to the store in the freezing cold snow to get something you might use once.

The dough is similar to the Grape Jelly Roly-Poly I made back in mid-summer. It’s so flaky and crumbly in the best of ways and the filling is so delicious; it’s like a biscuit version of a cinnamon roll. I halved the recipe and I still ended up with 12 biscuits, but I guess that means I can have two instead of one, right?

Maple Swirl Biscuits
adapted from BHG Fall Baking 2011 Magazine

Ingredients
1 ½ cups unbleached all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
½ stick (4 tbsp) unsalted butter, cold
½ cup milk
2 tbsp pure maple syrup
¼ cup brown sugar
3 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
½ cup powdered sugar
1 tbsp pure maple syrup
2 tsp milk

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper, set aside.
2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Using a pastry cutter (or a fork), cut the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Make a well into the center of the flour and butter mixture and pour the milk and maple syrup in all at once. Stir the wet and dry ingredients together until it forms a rough-looking ball.
3. Dump the dough onto a well-floured surface and knead about 10-12 times. Roll dough into an approximate 10x6 inch rectangle. Brush on the melted butter and then press the brown sugar on top, making sure to cover all of the melted butter spots. Starting from the long side, roll the dough into a spiral and pinch the seam to seal. Using a sharp knife, cut the dough into about 1 ½ inch slices. Arrange the biscuits onto the prepared baking sheet facing upwards. Gently press down on the dough. If you have left over melted butter, use it to brush the tops of the biscuits, if you don’t melt some butter and brush the tops of the biscuits.
4. Bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes or until golden. Once the biscuits are done baking, remove onto a cooling rack. While you wait for the biscuits to cool, make the glaze. To make the glaze, put the powdered sugar, maple syrup, and milk into a small bowl and whisk. You may wish to add more or less milk depending on how thick you want your glaze. Once the biscuits have cooled down slightly, drizzle the tops with the maple glaze.