Little Foodies: Buttermilk Biscuits

The Foodies' KitchenJuly 16, 2016

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One of my favorite weekend morning treats are warm, homemade biscuits fresh from the oven. Get some good marmalade and spread a little cream cheese on it and enjoy flaky goodness with your morning coffee. Kristen made these biscuits on a Sunday morning and we took them over to Grandmother’s house for afternoon coffee, she loves to share her recipes with the family.

They are easy to make but you do have to keep some tips in mind. First, your ingredients have to be cold. Even the flour. You can keep the flour in the refrigerator the night before you make your biscuits. The second tip is, do not over mix or over knead your ingredients. This will cause a dense biscuit, and we are looking for a flaky texture. When you first pulse the butter and half of your dry ingredients in the food processor do so just until it gets incorporated and it’s still lumpy. The same goes when you mix the buttermilk into the dry ingredients. Just lightly mix it with a spoon until it’s incorporated but still loose. You will form the mixture into a dough with your hands on your counter. Just knead it 2 or 3 times until a dough forms.

If you have round cutters, flour them before you make each cut. You could use a small glass to cut the biscuits, we’ve done so in the past. Or, you can also cut them into squares with a sharp knife.

Enjoy them while they are still warm from the oven! You can spread cream cheese and marmalade on them, or with whipped cream and fresh strawberries. If you can’t find buttermilk in your neck of the woods, here is an easy recipe to make it yourself.

Buttermilk Biscuits

Recipe by Martha Stewart’s Kitchen Conundrums
Yields: 18 2-inch biscuits

Ingredients:
4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for kneading
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
1 heaping teaspoon coarse salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch pieces, chilled
1 ½ cups buttermilk, well shaken, plus more for brushing tops
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 450ºF. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or cooking spray and set aside.
In a large bowl, whisk together your dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, and baking soda. Transfer half of the dry ingredients to the bowl of a food processor. Add butter and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs, with some larger pieces still remaining, don’t over process! Return this mixture back to the bowl with the rest of the dry ingredients, mix until combined.
Make a well in the center and gradually add buttermilk and vanilla, stirring with a fork or wooden spoon until large clumps form; do not allow a dough to form in the bowl. Turn mixture out onto a lightly floured work surface, and using lightly floured hands, knead two or three times just until a dough forms. It’s important that you don’t over knead the dough.
Pat dough into an 8-by-8-inch square or circle, that is about 1 inch thick. Use a 2-inch round cutter, and transfer to prepared baking sheet, spacing 2 inches apart. If you don’t have a round cutter, you can pat the dough into a square, and cut squares with a sharp knife to form your biscuits. Brush tops with buttermilk. Transfer to oven and bake until golden brown, about 12 minutes.

To download a printable version of this recipe, click below!

Download Printable

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