It’s official. I’m married to a carbaholic. I mean, it works for him… He enjoys every minute of the 2+ hours he spends at the gym each day, and even more all the sweets and carbs he probably burns off walking back to the kitchen for seconds. I, however, am relegated to living vicariously through his metabolism. I bake, he eats. It works for the most part, until we reach those tense moments where I’m still photographing and he just wants to eat.
A few Saturdays ago a strong desire for buttermilk biscuits jarred me from my sleeping in and dragged me into the kitchen. I whipped up a few basic biscuits to my husband’s delight and we haven’t exactly been out of biscuits since. Apparently Hulks loooooooooove biscuits. Almost as much as they do the gym. His pleasure is in eating them, mine is in tweaking the recipe every time I make them to find new flavor combinations… and an excuse to eat one from every batch.
I must say, I really enjoy the blank canvas that a good, basic biscuit recipe is. Sweet or savory, buttermilk biscuits can really lend themselves to all sorts of delicious flavor. You could find yourself eating them every meal of the day (and subsequently renewing that old gym membership). I guess that’s the southern girl in me… Since we’ve tackled biscuits and thereby Georgia, I may have to revive my true Nawlins beignets to keep that side of the family happy… But that’s another recipe for another day!
So having previously enjoyed the both sweet and savory versions of these biscuits, I decided to take a bit of a middle-of-the-road approach with these. I wanted something light but fragrant. Not to sweet, but just enough. Et voila! Lavender sage buttermilk biscuits proved to be the perfect combination. Baked to golden perfection and topped with a little agave (or not), these just might be my favorite flavored biscuits yet.
Truth is, you can really do anything you want with the flavors here. Once you’ve got the base recipe down, the flavor is all to taste! Decrease the sugar and swap in or out any herbs of your liking for a savory taste, or ditch the herbs altogether and bump up the sugar for sweet and delicious southern-style breakfast biscuits. So, here we go.
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons granulated sugar*
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 teaspoons dried lavender**
- 2 tablespoons fresh sage**
- 12 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1 cup buttermilk
- Preheat your oven to 400 °F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Then, mix your dry ingredients. Whisk together flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, baking soda and herbs in large bowl.
- Once ingredients are combined, take a pastry blender (or use your fingers!) to cut butter into the flour mixture. Keep working in the butter until you get course, pea-size crumbles. (If using your hands, work quickly so as not to warm the butter too much while working.) Then, pour in the buttermilk, stirring until you get big craggy clumps of almost-dough. If you're not using your hands yet, dig in! Knead the dough in the bowl just a few times until it all holds together.
- Time to cut your biscuits! Flip your dough out onto a lightly floured surface and pat (don't roll!) it out until it's about a half-inch thick. Using a 2" or 3" biscuit cutter (or... ummm... the inside edge of a 1 cup dry measure if you just got married and moved and have no idea where to find cookie cutters let alone biscuit cutters in the boxes you shoved into storage denying they still need to be unpacked...) press straight down into the dough to form your biscuits. Place them on the prepared baking sheet, about 2 inches apart.
- Now, you're ready to bake! They'll be ready to go in about 12-15 minutes.
*For sweeter biscuits, we use 3 teaspoons of brown sugar instead.
**A note on the herbs: you can use either fresh or dried, whichever you prefer or have on hand. When determining how much fresh or dried to use, remember you'll need about 3 times more fresh herbs if substituting for dried. So, 1 teaspoon of dried herbs = 1 tablespoon of fresh herbs.
If you want to do these ahead, just wrap up your pre-cut biscuits, air-tight, and freeze them until you're ready. They'll take a few minutes longer to bake but be just as delicious! (Trust me, this is the way to go if you have a resident biscuit addict!)
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