Sweet Cream Biscuits

In a lot of ways, this holiday season didn’t exactly fall into place the way I would have hoped. It still doesn’t feel much like Christmas, owing in part to the fact that it’s 50 degrees outside and raining. But somehow, which I guess it does every year, this week crept up on me without making a single sound, and when I turned around this weekend and it was December 19, I was shocked. I’d wanted to make so many holiday cookies, ones I’d grown up on and new ones, too, and share them here, but between a new job and getting sick, I only got to a single (albeit delicious) batch. At this point, I will just commit to doing a better job planning ahead next year, and I’m bringing you these biscuits as a consolation prize. They take 15 minutes to throw together and you can still get them on your holiday table.

Maybe it’s the strength of my ¼ southern genetics, but I have loved biscuits for as long as I can remember. If you asked me to imagine comfort food, one of the first images that would come to mind is a steaming biscuit, broken in half (not cut) and buttered up. And yet, when I first really got into cooking and baking a few years ago, I encountered nothing but disaster when I tried to re-create that at home. In lieu of the pillowy, rich biscuits I craved, I churned out weird, lumpy rocks, much more like hockey pucks in both taste and texture than anything you’d want to eat. And so, with my morale shot to smithereens, I tabled the project for later.

A few weeks ago I was flipping through one of Dorie Greenspan’s book looking for something cozy to bake and this recipe (and more specifically, the picture alongside it) inspired me to give it another shot. These biscuits aren’t exactly the standard, but are made with heavy cream instead of butter and the result is sweeter and richer. I’ll be honest- it took me two tries to get this recipe right, because the difference between soft and rock-hard biscuits is just the right amount of liquid and just the right amount of handling. But even though the first biscuits weren’t perfect, they were edible, and the second attempt only took another few minutes to put together, because biscuits really are that simple.

I was a little surprised that Dorie’s instructions, which are usually long and very (helpfully) detailed, were a little vague here – but now that I’ve made the biscuits, I get it. It really is all about how the dough feels, which is wet enough that it holds together without a ton of smushing but not so wet that you’ll inevitably end up with a heavy rock biscuit. So take Dorie’s lead on this one- buy twice the heavy cream you think you’ll need and get to know the dough.

Holidays can be stressful and emotionally fraught, but if there’s anything that can bring people together, besides spending too much money on each other and drinking copiously, I’d like to think it’s a steaming basket of fresh biscuits passed around the table. Happy holidays, all!