Bourbon Biscuits

My mom loves these biscuits, she used to eat them growing up in India. They are not very available here in the U.S. I hope this recipe is close to her memory of the cookies.

From: Nic Cooks

Homemade Bourbon Biscuits (makes 40 ish)

Biscuit:

300g plain flour
75g cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
pinch salt
125g unsalted butter
150 raw caster sugar plus extra for dusting (blended white sugar)
1 egg
50g golden syrup (or palm syrup)

Chocolate Filing:

200g dark chocolate
100g cooking cream (whipping cream)

DIRECTIONS:

BISCUIT:

1. Preheat the oven to 170C (325F).
2. Put the flour, cocoa powder bicarbonate soda and salt into a food processor and whiz to combine.
3. Add the butter and continue to blend until combined. It will start to look like fine breadcrumbs.
4. Add the sugar and whiz again.
5. In a separate bowl, lightly beat the egg then add the golden syrup and continue to beat until mixed.
6. Add the egg mixture to the food processor and whiz until the mixture starts to form a dough.
7. Tip the mixture out onto a clean surface and knead briefly to form a dough. place in the fridge to rest for at least an hour.
8. Roll the dough between two pieces of baking paper or cling wrap/film until it is about 2-3 mm thick. The dough is fairly delicate so this has to be done carefully but the thinner they are the crispier the biscuit will be.
9. Using a 30cm ruler, cut out lengths of dough to the width of the ruler. Then cut into rectangles about 7cm long. This sounds like an arduous job but if the biscuits are not the same size they won’t look very good when they are sandwiched together
10. Lay the rectangles on a non-stick baking tray or silicone mat. Using a skewer, prick ten holes (five each side) along the long edges of each biscuit to give that authentic bourbon look. The real biscuits also have the name written on them but my skills didn’t stretch to that.
11. Re-roll any dough scraps and continue until all dough has been used up. This amount of dough makes about 40 biscuits so you will probably have to bake in batches.
12. Bake for 12 minutes at 170C (325F). Once cooked remove from the tray immediately and lay on a sheet of baking paper on a hard, flat surface to cool. This will ensure that any biscuits that have curled during baking cool flat. While they are still warm sprinkle with a little of the leftover caster sugar.

FILLING:

1. While the biscuits are cooling make the filling.
2. Melt the chocolate then stir in the cream, place in a piping bag to cool slightly or do what I did and use a sandwich bag and snip a tiny bit off the corner.
3. Match the biscuits into evenly sized pairs. Pipe the chocolate onto the bottom of one biscuit then top with a second biscuit. Push down gently so they stick but not too hard so the filling doesn’t burst out of the edges.
4. Allow to cool then eat. They taste better the following day.

 

Alternate Recipe here: http://www.thelittleloaf.com/2012/05/07/real-bourbon-biscuits/

And here: http://theenglishkitchen.blogspot.com/2012/08/real-bourbon-biscuits.html

And here: http://www.mrsbishopsbakesandbanter.co.uk/2015/06/homemade-bourbon-biscuits-recipe.html

 

Pillsbury’s Buttermilk Biscuits

These are rolled out biscuits, not drop biscuits.

Recipe makes 6 biscuits, each cut out with a 2 inch round cutter.

From “Pillsbury the Complete Book of Baking”

INGREDIENTS:

1 c flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp (pinch) baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 c (half stick) room temperature butter
1/2 c buttermilk (or liquidy yogurt, or milk and yogurt mix)

DIRECTIONS:

Mix dry ingredients.

Add butter. Mix.

Add buttermilk. Mix.

Dough should be of rolling consistency. Make round, fridge for an hour.

Roll out 1/2 inch thick, cut with 2 inch round cutter (or a glass about that size, if you don’t have around cutter).

Bake 450 F for 8-12 min on ungreased cookie sheet (I use nonstick or silpat) until light brown. Enjoy warm.

NOTE: These taste fine and look good, the family liked them a lot, but honestly I find them very meh. They didn’t have the flaky biscuit layers that I like, or that soft as air consistency. For me, meh.

White Lily Light and Fluffy Biscuits

From the White Lily Light and Fluffy Biscuits recipe on the back of the White Lily Enriched Unbleached Self-Rising Flour package

Makes 12 biscuits

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups White Lily self-rising flour *
1/4 cup shortening, chilled (replace with butter)
2/3 to 3/4 cups buttermilk or milk

DIRECTIONS:

Heat oven to 500°F. Coat baking sheet with no-stick cooking spray.

Measure flour into large bowl. Cut in shortening with pastry blender or 2 knives until crumbs are the size of peas. Blend in just enough milk with fork until dough leaves sides of bowl.

Turn dough onto lightly floured surface. Knead gently 2 to 3 times. Roll dough to 1/2-inch thickness. Cut using floured 2-inch biscuit cutter. Place on prepared baking sheet 1-inch apart for crisp sides or almost touching for soft sides.

Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until golden brown.

SUBSTITUTIONS:

1 c buttermilk =

1 c milk
1 tbsp lemon juice or vinegar (white, apple cider, or rice)

Mix and let sit for 5 min.

Buttermilk Biscuits

1 pint flour

1 tsp buttter

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 c buttermilk

Directions:

Put butter and salt into the flour and soda with the buttermilk.

Mix together.

Roll thin and cut into rounds.
Bake 20 min.

British Cheese and Mustard Biscuits

Mary Berry Recipe from Mary Berry’s Stress Free Kitchen

Ingredients:

75 g (3 oz) shelled walnuts

75 g (3 oz) Stilton cheese, or any leftover blue cheese, grated (Americans should probably use cheddar cheese)

1 tsp English mustard powder (Americans should use 1 tsp gray poupon dijon mustard or coleman’s mustard)

150 g (5 oz) plain flour (I’m guessing this is all purpose flour)

100 g (4 oz) butter at room temperature

salt and pepper to taste

50 g (2 0z) parmesan cheese, coarsely grated

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 180 C.

2. Blend walnuts, coarsely, in a food processor. Add in all the rest of the ingredients (except for 1/3 of the parmesan cheese, which you should save for the topping). Blend for 3 seconds.

3. Turn out dough onto floured surface. Divide into two. Roll out into log shape about 6 in long and 2.5 in in diameter. Wrap dough in cling film and fridge until firm.

4. Slice log into discs about 1/4 in thick. Spread onto two baking sheets greased, lined with parchment paper, or on a silpat. Sprinkle with reserved parmesan cheese.

5. Bake 15-20 min, or until pale golden at the edges.

6. Cool and enjoy!

Cream Cheese Biscuits

from Martha Stewart Baking p. 33
(MS has more complicated instructions, I just went and made it easy and fast instead)

Cream Cheese Biscuits

Cream Cheese Biscuits

Cream Cheese Biscuits

Ingredients:

2.25 c all purpose flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
0.25 tsp baking soda
1.25 tsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
0.5 c butter (1  stick) (cold, cut into pieces)
4 oz cream cheese (cold, cut into pieces)
1 c  greek yogurt (or buttermilk, or yogurt, or ricotta cheese)

Directions:

1. Mix dry ingredients.

2. Add wet ingredients.

3. Mix until a dough just forms in kitchenaid mixer. Do not overmix.

4. Roll into 1 inch diameter balls, flatten, place on cookie sheet with silpat on top.

5. Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes.

You can fridge leftover dough for about a month. If you make balls, flatten and fridge them, just pop them in the preheated oven in the morning for 15 minutes and enjoy your nice warm fresh and easy breakfast! 🙂

FROZEN CREAM CHEESE BISCUITS:

I put unused dough in the freezer, wrapped in cling wrap.

I defrosted it until I could put a knife through it.

I just chopped it into squares and baked it as directed above.

It came out looking like this:

Cream Cheese Biscuits

Buttermilk Biscuits

Makes 12 small duck-shaped biscuits
from Martha Stewart Living Cookbook p. 574

Buttermilk Duckie Biscuits

Ingredients:

2 c all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 c (1 stick) unsalted butter (from the fridge is okay, you can chop or grate it)
1 c yogurt or buttermilk

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Prepare cookie sheet with silpat.
2. Mix dry ingredients.
3. Add butter.
4. Add yogurt.
5. Mix well, dough will be sticky.
6. Turn onto a well floured work surface. Pat into a 1/2 inch thick size.
7. Use duckie cookie cutters (or whatever shape you prefer) to cut out biscuits into roughly 3 inch diameter shapes.
8. Biscuits rise, not spread, so you can put them close to each other on the cookie sheet.
9. You can use a pastry brush and brush biscuits with a milk wash, melted butter, or an egg wash. They’re all good.
10. Bake for 17 minutes. Enjoy!

Note for singletons: Serves a family of four. If you’re by yourself, you can make this and fridge or freeze the rest. They toast up really nicely in the toaster oven before work. That’s why I didn’t make them super thick. Martha Stewart’s original recipe asked for the biscuits to be 1 inch thick, with a 20 min baking time. You can do that, but as leftovers, if you take the biscuits out of the freezer to reheat and they are that thick, they can’t be split so you either have to warm it up for a long time (and make sure it doesn’t burn!) or live with the center being cold. At the thickness I baked them, they warm up easily and can still be split and eaten with butter and jam if you want, or by themselves on the run with coffee.