The Best Drop Biscuits

Phew. First post with a recipe in quite some time, I know, but for good reason. I just got back from a trip to England and Paris. I spent a total of 8 days in England and 2 days in Paris.

So, back to the recipe. I made these amazing biscuits right before I left on my trip. For a reason I can’t remember I had this craving for biscuits. Not just any biscuits though. I was craving for Pillsbury’s biscuits (the soft and fluffy kind, not the flaky kind-which is also very delicious!) I know that Pillsbury isn’t exactly healthy and I’ve stopped making things from boxes, tubes, and yellow packages, so I wasn’t going to go running to the store (something I can literally do because I live a 7 minute walk from the store; dangerous, I know) to get them. Instead, I looked under my “To Bake” list I have saved on the computer to see if I had any biscuits on there. Turns out I had just one biscuit recipe saved.

I found the recipe on Monica’s blog Lick the Bowl Good (she got the recipe from Cook’s Illustrated). They are called The Best Drop Biscuits, and I know a lot of people are turned off by the words “the best” because “the best” isn’t always the best to everyone. However, in my case, these seriously are the BEST homemade biscuits I have ever tasted. They are light, fluffy, and soft in the center and golden brown and slightly crisp on the outside. I usually don’t try and have too much bread during dinner because I think I eat too much bread as it is (I’m always eating sandwiches and hamburgers and such), but that night I had two and had to restrain myself from getting a third. And best of all, they tasted exactly, if not better, than Pillsbury’s buttermilk biscuits.

Not only are these extremely tasty, but they are really easy to whip up. I ended up making two trays of 7 biscuits (just because I don’t like having two pans in the oven at once) all in less than 30 minutes.  You seriously have to try this recipe, you won’t regret it one bit!

The Best Drop Biscuits
From Lick the Bowl Good
Makes 14 biscuits
Ingredients
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. sugar
¾ tsp. salt
1 cup buttermilk*
1 stick unsalted butter, melted and cooled for 5 minutes

*whenever there is buttermilk in the recipe, I tend to use powdered buttermilk and add water to it. This makes dough much looser than if you were to use regular buttermilk. I find that the rend result isn’t too terribly different, but it’s just something to keep in mind.

Directions
Preheat the oven to 475 F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.

Wisk together the flour, baking powder, soda, sugar, and salt in a large bowl. Stir the buttermilk and melted butter together in a small bowl.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry. Stir with a rubber spatula until the dough just forms and starts to pull a little away from the sides. Take a medium cookie scoop (or ¼ cup measure) and scoop the batter onto the lined sheet tray leaving about 1-2 inches in between each biscuit. Bake until the tops are golden brown. Monica says it will take 12-14 minutes, but for me it took 9 minutes, so set the timer for 9 minutes and check on them periodically.

Serve warm.

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.

Hagrid's Rock Cakes

I know I am being a little redundant with the cinnamon flavorings, but I just couldn’t resist this time. I love the slightly sweet and warm sent and taste of cinnamon, not to mention the pretty speckles of brown it gives food.

These are Rock Cakes. Again, made from my little Harry Potter Cookbook, which I’m finding has some pretty good recipes in it for something based off of a fantasy series. The book mentions that these cakes (which are more like biscuits - the American kind) have been featured along side Hagrid quite a few times. It’s known that Hagrid doesn’t always have the best looking or tasty sounding treats, but these are actually really good.

These Rock Cakes are a bit sweet, which I don’t mind, and they have a nice little crisp outer crust that I’m especially fond of when biting into biscuits. Their insides are so soft, and have a great crumb. I loved tearing the cake in half and just nibbling on them. They are indeed the perfect afternoon snack.

I ended up making a half batch, since I wasn’t sure how these would turn out because last time I made a biscuit type thing they turned out like this. I expected to get sixish cakes out of these, but the more batter I added to the original six, the bigger they got and I didn’t know how much they would spread or rise or what. So I ended up making nine cakes and I willingly admit that I ate a third of them along with my lunch.

Hagrid's Rock Cakes

from The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook

Ingredients
2 cups flour
½ cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp salt
1 stick cold butter, cubed
1 egg
1/3 cup milk
1 cup raisins

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. With your finger tips, rub the cold butter into the flour mixture until the mixture resembles wet sand. This will take a little while. I also tossed the flour around the butter too, to get it extra incorporated.
3. Beat the egg and the milk together and pour into the flour and butter mixture. Use a rubber spatula or a fork to start bringing the mixture together. After a few mixes, ditch the utensil of your choice and start mixing the dough by hand. I found this to be a lit easier than just using a spatula to get everything well mixed. If you chose to use raisins (I did not) now is the time to fold them into the sticky batter.
4. Roll the dough into one inch balls and place on the lined baking sheet, two inches apart. I made mine a little bigger than one inch and it still gave me 50% more biscuits, so make them a little bigger if you want less. Bake for 18-25 minutes (depending on the size).

"For rock-hard rock cakes like Hagrid's, just bake them for too long and eat them a week later at your own risk!" -This quote really amused me when I read the bottom of the page.