For the past few weeks, I’ve been recovering from corrective jaw surgery and a septoplasty. It hasn’t been easy, and recuperating is getting old to say the least. While the worst is now behind me (try to imagine your face stretched so tight with swelling that it’s shiny, being totally congested but not allowed to blow your nose, and the constant feeling that you’re about to suffocate on your own face), I’ve reached the point now where progress has slowed and it’s hard to imagine that my face is going to look normal again someday. The six-week liquid diet, the part of this I’d been dreading most, is frankly the least of my worries now.
That’s not to say it’s at all fun. I’ve been rotating through various flavors of Ensure (butter pecan, the real underdog, has turned out to be the winner), fruit and nut butter smoothies and pureed soups (corn chowder and minestrone are on the docket for this week). Last night, out of sheer desperation for a new taste, I pureed massaman curry and rice from my local Thai takeout place into a weird, thick soup. My new Vitamix, the price of which I’d scoffed at previously, has been an absolute life-saver, but I can’t stress enough how I miss the sheer act of chewing. And if you ask me the food I miss the most so far it’s baked goods – carbs, crumbs, texture.
I made these flaky biscuits a couple of months before my surgery and served them with a spectacular fried soft shell crab and coleslaw, both of which I’ll share with you soon. One of my favorite things about these golden pucks is that they toe the line perfectly between sweet and savory. They contain toasted pecans and just a hint of sugar, which means they’re amazing buttered and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, as well as split, generously buttered and salted and eaten alongside your main course.
As usual, Dorie Greenspan gets it just right with a recipe that’s deliciously impressive but also dead simple – not to mention easily replicable every single time. I tend towards a heavy hand in the baking department and all I need to do to make these come out just right is the mantra “don’t overmix” which plays in my head as I carefully pat the dough into a high circle, ready to be cut into rounds.
It would be utterly torturous for me in my current state to attempt any baking, even for others, if only for the fact that I can’t taste as I go. So right now all I’ve got is the memories of delicious standbys like these biscuits to keep me going, along with the promise of many more rows of flaky, golden baked goods that surely await me in my future.
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour (or 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour and 1/3 cup cake flour)
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 cup (packed) light brown sugar
- 5 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into 10 pieces
- 1/2 cup cold sour cream
- 1/4 cup cold whole milk
- 1/3 cup finely chopped pecans, preferably toasted
Instructions
- Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 425°F. Get out a sharp 2-inch-diameter biscuit cutter and line a baking sheet with parchment or a silicone mat.
- Whisk in the flour(s), baking powder, salt and baking soda together in a bowl. Stir in the brown sugar, making certain there are no lumps. Drop in the butter and, using your fingers, toss to coat the pieces of butter with flour. Quickly, working with your fingertips or a pastry blender, cut and rub the butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture is pebbly. You'll have pea-size pieces, pieces the size of oatmeal flakes and pieces the size of everything in between.
- Stir the sour cream and milk together and pour over the dry ingredients. Grab a fork and gently toss and turn the ingredients together until you've go ta nice soft dough. Now reach into the bowl with your hands and give the dough a quick, gentle kneading- 3 or 4 turns should be just enough to bring everything together. Toss in the pecans and knead another 2 to 3 times to incorporate them.
- Lightly dust a work surface with flour and turn out the dough. Dust the top of the dough very lightly with flour and pat the dough out with your hands or roll it with a pin until it is about 1/2 inch high. Don't worry if the dough isn't completely even- a quick, light touch is more important than accuracy.
- Use the biscuit cutter to cut out as many biscuits as you can. Try to cut the biscuits close to one another so you get the most you can out of this first round. By hand or with a small spatula, transfer the biscuits to the baking sheet. Gather together the scraps, working them as little as possible, pat out to a 1/2-inch thickness and cut as many additional biscuits as you can; transfer these to the sheet. (The biscuits can be made to this point and frozen on the baking sheet, then wrapped airtight and kept for up to 2 months. Bake without defrosting- just add a couple more minutes to the oven time.)
- Bake the biscuits for 14 to 18 minutes, or until they are tall, puffed and golden brown. Transfer them to a serving basket.
Notes
https://www.thekitchenchronicles.com/2017/06/29/pecan-sour-cream-biscuits/
