CINNAMON BISCUITS with HONEY BUTTER (2024)

FAQs

Are biscuits better made with butter or Crisco? ›

Flavor-wise, the Crisco biscuits seemed to be drier and had a pastier flavor profile compared to the butter biscuits. My team members and I also found that the biscuits made with Crisco produced the greatest height. However, other teams found that the biscuits made with butter produced the greatest height.

Heavy Cream.

The heavy cream adds flavor to the biscuit by adding a little more fat and helps hydrate the dough. The extra fat in the heavy cream is helpful because buttermilk in stores is often “low-fat” buttermilk.

Make sure your butter is at the correct temperature – use unsalted butter softened to room temperature for creaming and cold, unsalted butter for biscuits and pastries that require butter to be rubbed into the flour.

HEAT oven to 375°F (or 350°F for nonstick cookie sheet). PLACE biscuits 1 to 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet. BAKE 11 to 15 minutes or until golden brown.

The secret to the best biscuits is using very cold butter and baking powder. We've made a lot of biscuits, but this easy biscuits recipe is the one we turn to the most (they are so fluffy!).

*Substitute buttermilk, light cream, or heavy cream for the whole milk, if you prefer; use enough of whatever liquid you choose to bring the dough together readily, without you having to work it too much. The higher-fat liquid you use, the more tender and richer-tasting your biscuits will be.

There are many theories about why Southern biscuits are different (ahem, better) than other biscuits—richer buttermilk, more butter, better grandmothers—but the real difference is more fundamental. Southern biscuits are different because of the flour most Southerners use. My grandmother swore by White Lily flour.

Increasing the amount of butter definitely makes the biscuit "taste" softer, more crumbly, and more flaky.

If you are going to substitute a non-cultured liquid into your biscuits, I'd strongly recommend using low-fat milk, or even whole milk, instead of cream. Both will give you a more pleasant biscuit, with just the right amount of fat that you'll still want to slather the inside with butter.

Use Cold Butter for Biscuits

This makes the biscuits airy and flaky on the inside. We default to our Land O Lakes® Salted Butter when baking biscuits.

Is Land O Lakes real butter? ›

Response from Land O'Lakes:

The ingredients in our butter remain the same, sweet cream and salt. Water is not added to butter. Butter is produced by churning fresh, sweet cream, and during this process some water remains in the butterfat.

But the best was the frozen butter, which made biscuits with the lightest, flakiest and softest texture, as well as with the highest rise. This is because the bits of frozen butter remained more intact during mixing than the cold butter. Try it in our recipe for Buttermilk Biscuits.

When the fat is cut too small, after baking there will be more, smaller air pockets left by the melting fat. The result is a baked product that crumbles. When cutting in shortening and other solid fats, cut only until the pieces of shortening are 1/8- to 1/4-inch in size.

DO NOT OVERMIX. Dough will not be completely smooth. Gather dough into a ball and knead on lightly floured surface quickly and gently, about 6 to 8 times, just until no longer sticky. The kneading is meant only to flatten the pieces of fat into flakes, not to blend fat completely with the flour.

If you do think this about your dough, fight the urge to add more dry ingredients — dough that isn't wet enough will bake into a hard, dry biscuit.

Shortening traps more air bubbles and has a higher melting point than butter, so recipes using shortening tend to produce baked goods with more lift and that hold their shape during baking. Interior texture will also be softer and lighter.

High-fat butter, such as Kerrygold Butter, is best. The rich fat from the butter releases water when the biscuits are baking which is what contributes to the beautiful layers and flakiness that we love about biscuits.

Use Cold Butter for Biscuits

For flaky layers, use cold butter. When you cut in the butter, you have coarse crumbs of butter coated with flour. When the biscuit bakes, the butter will melt, releasing steam and creating pockets of air. This makes the biscuits airy and flaky on the inside.