Green Eats

My love for biscuits has been approaching addiction-like levels as of late, and this photo nearly sent me straight to the kitchen to whip up a batch. There are a zillion biscuit recipes out there (you can find mine after the jump), and almost all are quick and simple and can easily be tweaked to include local ingredients like flour, butter, and cream. Plus you can top them with a fresh fried local egg, or drizzle with some delicious local honey! So when the anemic state of your farmers’ market gives you the winter blues, just hop into the kitchen and make a big batch of buttery, flaky biscuits!

(Photo courtesy of All That Splatters via FoodGawker)

Buttermilk Biscuits

(adapted from Marion Cunningham’s Cream Biscuits recipe)

To start you’ll need:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp baking powder*
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1-1.5 cups buttermilk
• 6 tbsp cold butter, in pieces
• 2 tbsp butter, melted

1. Preheat the oven to 425 F
2. Combine the flour, salt, baking power, and sugar with a fork to blend. Add the cold butter and mix in using a hand-held dough blender (I use my Cuisinart food processor**).
3. Slowly add the buttermilk until the dough comes together, stirring (or processing) constantly.
4. Knead the dough on a floured surface for a minute or so, and then pat or roll out into a square roughly 1/2-3/4 inch thick.
5. Cut dough into squares using a sharp knife or into rounds using a biscuit cutter. Place about 2 inches apart on an ungreased baking sheet, brush tops with melted butter, and bake for about 15 minutes or until lightly browned on top.

*If your biscuits don’t rise there is a good chance your baking powder is old. I would never recommend keeping a tin of baking powder for more than a year – even better, buy smaller tins so that you use it up faster and are forced to replace it more frequently.

**Making the biscuit dough in a food processor is really easy, just add all the dry ingredients to the bowl and pulse a time or to to blend, then slowly pour in the buttermilk while running the blade. It takes seconds!