Oh my, sweetie pie: These are just so yummy.

These biscuits are a versatile companion for almost any cold-weather meal. Made with mashed sweet potato, they’re moist and fragrant with ginger.

Serve them instead of bread with herb-roasted chicken and roasted root vegetables flecked with crispy bacon. Or gobble them up for dessert with a little vanilla ice cream and a drizzle of honey after a hearty dinner on a chilly night.

They’ll do just fine either way.

For breakfast, you could crumble in a little fried bacon and a spoonful of fresh rosemary—then serve them piping hot with lots of cold butter.

To make them a little more elegant, you could brush the biscuits with an egg wash, then sprinkle them with a few tablespoons of sesame seeds right before they go into the oven.

A note on biscuit poof

I know: Biscuit poof sounds like it could be related to my aforementioned case of fat pants, also referred to as “cookie pants” by one brilliant reader. (Sounds much better, I know.)

The mashed sweet potato makes these biscuits a little more dense than regular biscuits. This means that they won’t poof up as dramatically as regular biscuits.

No matter. They’re still ultra tender, and are dotted with bits of sumptuous sweet potato.

How to cook a sweet potato

For the sweet potato, you want to find a nice, plump potato. Aim for about 12 ounces or so, if you’re a weights-and-measures type.

I poke a bunch of holes in mine, then zap it in the microwave for about 10 minutes or so on high until it’s cooked through. (Be sure to poke holes in your potato if you cook it this way, lest it explode in the microwave.)

Now, I know a lot of folks who don’t like to nuke veggies. If that includes you, you can also boil, steam, or roast them. The goal is to wind up with about 1 cup of mashed sweet potato.

Cook yours with the skin on. When it’s done, split it open just like you would for a baked potato.

Let it cool ’til it won’t melt your skin off, then scrape out the insides with a fork.

Spread it out to help it cool faster while you put together the dough.

Ginger Sweetie Pie Biscuits

1 2/3 cups flour
1 Tbls. brown sugar
3 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. ground ginger
6 Tbls. butter, softened
1 cup sweet potato, cooked, skinned & mashed
1/2 cup heavy cream

Yields 9-12 biscuits, depending on how big you cut them

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper and set aside.

Make the biscuit dough

Combine the flour, brown sugar, baking powder, salt, and ground ginger in the bowl of your mixer. (You can also just as easily make these the old-fashioned way: with a little elbow grease and a pastry cutter.)

Mix briefly to combine these dry ingredients. (I always just do this using the beater attachment as a spoon.)

Cut your butter up into small-ish squares (so it breaks up easier + faster).

Add the butter to the dry ingredients and mix until it’s evenly distributed.

You’re aiming for the consistency of little pebbles. Pieces of butter are OK. They’ll release moisture as the biscuits bake, which will help them rise.

Grab all that glorious mashed sweet potato and toss it into the bowl.

Add the heavy cream.

Mix quickly on high until the dough *just* comes together. Don’t overmix the dough, or else your biscuits will be heavy.

Shape the biscuits

Round the dough up (if there are floury crumbs in the bottom of the bowl, just smoosh them into the dough). Set it on a lightly floured board. Pat it down with your hand so it’s relatively flat.

You’re aiming for maybe just about a half an inch thick. I’m not usually a fan of rulers in the kitchen, so here’s a regular dinner fork for scale.

Shape the dough into a rough square.

Whack it into 9 pieces, like this, with a bencher or large butcher’s knife.

Bake biscuits and inhale

Separate the squares and set them on your prepared pan. Space them out so they’re not touching.

Bake at 425 degrees for about 15-17 minutes, or until they’re golden brown and firm to the touch.

Yank the pan out of the oven. Transfer the biscuits to a rack to cool. They should be brown on the bottom, like this:

If they last, they’ll keep for about two days, tightly sealed.

Enjoy!

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Cheese makes (almost) everything better. It’s one of the 10 commandments of The Hungry Mouse Test Kitchen. When I made these the other night, The Angry Chef told me that, hands down, it’s my best biscuit recipe. “Even better than my buttermilk biscuits?” I asked. “Yep, even better,” he told me. Well then. I blame it on the cheese. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner!

These biscuits are ridiculously easy to make. Simply enrich a handful of dry ingredients with a heavenly amount of heavy cream and shredded cheddar, and…voila! Biscuits that are light, fluffy, and dotted with bits of fragrant, molten cheese.

These biscuits are perfect for a leisurely weekend breakfast or brunch. You can use them as the base for over-the-top fried egg sandwiches. Or serve them instead of cornbread at your next barbecue.

Like I said, they’re really easy to make.

Just toss the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl, give ‘em a swirl, and drizzle in the cream and cheese. Mix until the dough just comes together. The less you handle the dough, the more tender your biscuits will be.

I cut my biscuits into squares—not rounds. That way, there’s no cutting, reshaping the dough, then cutting again. Just pat the dough out once, whack it into squares, and they’re ready to bake.

If you wanted to go crazy, toss in a handful or two of crisp, crumbled bacon when you add the cheese.

Cheddar Cheese Biscuits

3 cups flour
1 1/2 Tbls. baking powder
1 Tbls. sugar
2 tsp. kosher salt
2 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 3/4 cups sharp cheddar cheese, grated
4 Tbls. butter

Yields about 16 large biscuits

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Line two sheet pans with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Set them aside.

Make the biscuit dough

Combine the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt in a large bowl. Mix to thoroughly combine.

Pour in the heavy cream.

Toss in the shredded cheddar cheese.

Mix with a wooden spoon until the ingredients just come together as a dough. (Again, you don’t want to overwork it.) It will look raggy and very floury. That’s just fine.

Round the dough up with your hands and smoosh it together into a ball. Set the ball on a lightly floured board.

Cut the biscuits

With your hands, smoosh the dough down so that it’s relatively flat. You want it to be about an inch thick.

Square off the sides so your dough is roughly shaped like a rectangle.

With a bencher or large knife, cut the dough into 16 squares about the same size. (The corners will likely be a little smaller. That’s just fine.)

Transfer the biscuits to your prepared baking sheets. Space them out.

Let the biscuits rest while you melt the butter.

Brush the biscuits with butter and bake

Put the butter in a small saucepan on the stove over low heat to melt it.

When the butter is melted, brush the top of each biscuit with melted butter.

Pop the biscuits into your preheated 375 degree oven. Bake at 375 for 22-24 minutes.

They’re done when they’re lightly browned on the top, like this.

Cool them for 10 minutes on the pan. Then transfer to a rack to finish cooling.

Enjoy!

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Sometimes I bake things, then need to immediately give them away so I don’t gobble down the whole pan. You know how that goes? This cornbread is like that. It’s sweet, light, and soft—with just the right amount of bite from stone-ground cornmeal.

And since it’s made with low-fat buttermilk and olive oil (instead of milk and butter), it’s slightly better for you.

If you don’t have buttermilk on hand, you can use soured milk, too. Just add a few drops of white vinegar or lemon juice to whole milk. Let it sit for about 5 minutes on the counter before adding to the mixture. You can also totally use regular milk, too.

The cornbread batter is quick to whip together, and bakes in about 20 minutes. It’s very forgiving, and is a very satisfying thing for a novice baker to make.

I think my favorite way to eat cornbread is lightly toasted with cold butter and a little kosher salt.

Buttermilk Cornbread

1 cup stone ground cornmeal
1 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
3 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1/2 cup olive oil
2/3 cup buttermilk
2 eggs
spray oil or butter

Yields 1 8-inch x 8-inch cornbread

Buttermilk Cornbread: Prep your pan

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

Generously grease an 8-inch x 8-inch baking pan with butter or spray oil. Line the bottom with a square of parchment paper. Set aside.

Buttermilk Cornbread: Mix the dry ingredients together

Put the cornmeal in a mixing bowl.

Toss in the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.

Stir them together with a whisk until you have a uniform mixture.

Buttermilk Cornbread: Add the wet ingredients to the dry

Pour in the olive oil.

Add the buttermilk.

Crack in the eggs.

Whisk it all up until the dough comes together and is fairly uniform in consistency.

It will be thick, and look about like this:

Thick, as in, really thick:

Buttermilk Cornbread: Into the oven!

Scrape the dough out into your prepared pan.

Smooth the surface down with a rubber spatula.

Pop it into your preheated 400 degree oven and bake for about 20 minutes.

Buttermilk Cornbread: How do I know when it’s done?

Good question. Your cornbread is done when the edges turn a wee bit brown. (They should be lightly brown, not dark brown and hard.) There may be a few slight cracks closer to the edges of the pan.

The surface should be firm to the touch when you press on it with a finger. (The indentation your finger makes should spring back, not stay depressed.)

Oh, and a toothpick should come out clean when inserted in the middle of the cornbread.

Cool completely in the pan before cutting.

Serve and enjoy!

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These are super easy to make.

If you have a food processor or mixer, you can throw them together in less than 10 minutes. If you don’t, it will take just a wee bit longer to cut the butter and flour together with a pastry cutter or a couple of forks.

I made these this morning while The Angry Chef was out in the snow, shoveling out the car. (Ah, street parking in the city…)

I stuck a pan of bacon in the oven at the same time as the biscuits, and made him a few bacon and cheese sandwiches when he came in.

These biscuits are tangy, light, and fluffy. And they make the house smell great as they bake.

The trick to getting them to poof up is to not overwork the dough. Once you’ve cut the butter into the flour, drizzle in the buttermilk until the dough just comes together—then stop.

Homemade Buttermilk Biscuits

2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. kosher salt
4 Tbls. butter (that’s a half a stick)
3/4 cup buttermilk

Makes 6 biscuits, about 3-inches in diameter (or more if you use a smaller biscuit cutter)

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper and set aside.

How to Make Buttermilk Biscuits: Make the dough

In the bowl of your food processor, put the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Pulse the ingredients a few times to combine them.

Grab your butter out of the fridge (you want it to be cold).

Cut it into a few pieces. Toss them into the dry ingredients in your food processor.

Pulse the flour and butter together a few times until the butter *just* breaks down into pieces.

(There are a few things that make these biscuits poof up in the oven. The moisture from these tiny pieces of butter is one of them. It turns into steam and helps leaven the dough.)

You want the mixture to look like coarse meal, like this:

Drizzle the buttermilk in slowly, pulsing the dough as you go.

If you’re using a food processor, keep the top on and pour it through the feeder tube. If you’re using a stand mixer, keep the mixer on low and drizzle it in. If you’re doing it by hand, just pour it in a little at a time, mixing as you go.

The goal is to mix the dough as little as possible. You just want it to come together and be raggy looking. That’s what helps create all those fabulous layers in your finished biscuit.

Your dough should look about like this:

How to Make Buttermilk Biscuits: Cut the biscuits

Toss a little flour on a large cutting board or your counter, like this:

Gather up your dough and press it into a rough ball. Put the dough on your board.

With your hands, smoosh the dough down until it’s flat.

You want it to be about a half-an-inch thick.

Cut your biscuits starting at the edge of the dough. I used a big cutter, so the biscuits would be a good size for sandwiches.

Pick the cutter up, dough and all. Pop the cut biscuit out gently.

Set the biscuit on your prepared sheet pan.

Repeat with the rest of the dough.

When you can’t get any more biscuits out of this pass of the dough, round up the scraps.

Press them together into a ball, and smoosh the dough flat again.

Keep doing this until you’ve used up almost all your dough.

When you get to the last blob of dough, smoosh it just flat enough so you can trim the edges off with the cutter.

How to Make Buttermilk Biscuits: Bake the biscuits

Pop the the pan into your preheated 450 degree oven. Bake the biscuits for 10-12 minutes, until they’re poofy and golden brown on top.

After about 6 minutes, they should be puffing up nicely (but still look raw on the edges):

They’re done when they’re golden brown on top.

Wait, wait! What about that bacon and cheese thing at the top?

Sure thing.

How to Make Buttermilk Biscuits: Bacon in the oven

I’ve talked to more than a few folks who are surprised that I make bacon in the oven. It’s really easy, the bacon stays flat, and it keeps your stove top from getting splattered with grease.

I learned this working at a restaurant, and have never fried bacon on the stove since.

Line a sheet pan twice with foil. Lay the bacon out flat and evenly.

Use as many slices of bacon as you like. A few rashers will cook just as well as a whole pound.

Pop the pan in your 450 degree oven with your biscuits.

The bacon will take maybe 13-18 minutes to cook, depending on how crispy you like it. Just keep a good eye on it as it bakes.

I yanked mine out after maybe 15 minutes, when it was nice and crisp—but not completely crunchy.

When it comes out of the oven, it’ll be swimming in fat.

Nestle the bacon in between layers of paper towels on a plate. This will help blot off the excess grease.

How to Make Buttermilk Biscuits: Make a bacon & cheese biscuit sandwich

Slice a hot biscuit in half. Break up two slices of bacon and put them on your biscuit. If you like, you could fry an egg quickly and add it in.

Break up a slice of cheese on top of the bacon.

Top with the other half of the biscuit.

The heat from the hot bacon and biscuit should be enough to melt the cheese. If it’s not, pop it in the microwave, toaster oven, or regular oven ’til it’s done to your liking.

Enjoy!

***
Copyright 2008-2009 The Hungry Mouse™/Jessica B. Konopa. All rights reserved.

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According to Epicurious.com, a buckle is a cake where the batter rises above the fruit, “buckling it” while it cooks. It’s a really quick and simple cake to make.

A note on fruit
If you use whole, fresh blueberries, you’ll get a nice white cake studded with gooey berries. If you use frozen berries, you’ll get a cake that’s more of a mottled purple and white. They taste just about the same. The latter is just a little, um, startling—if you’re not expecting it.

Blueberry Buckle

3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 stick butter
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups blueberries, fresh or frozen

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Grease a 9-inch cake pan and set aside.

Start by softening the butter a little, then mixing it with the egg and sugar. Add in the milk, flour, baking powder, and salt. At the very end, fold in the blueberries.

Pour batter into cake pan and bake at 375 degrees for 45-50 minutes, or until the top is golden brown and a toothpick, when inserted, comes out clean.

***
Copyright 2008 The Hungry Mouse™/Jessica B. Konopa. All rights reserved.

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