A few weeks ago my family and I walked to one of our favorite parts of town to explore shops and enjoy the outdoors before the winter winds blow in and the city freezes over. One of our favorite places to go is the Amazon book store, because the boys love to look at new books and I am able to sneak a peek at some baking cookbooks. I decided to buy the Bake From Scratch cookbook and I dug right into looking through all the recipes. The pictures are beautiful, the recipes are approachable but some with a slight stretch to them to make me feel like I will be learning new skills. There were so many that I wanted to make, but decided to start simply with the buttermilk drop biscuits.
On Saturday morning, we woke up, got the boys going with our morning routines and my favorite baking assistant and I got to work making the biscuits. My assistant is super excited to help out, dumps everything in the bowl eagerly, mixes with vigor and generally will destroy any recipe the second you look away….he is 2 and a half….he is fantastic! I love baking with him and teaching him about this passion of mine. Hopefully it will get easier to bake with him one day, but for now, you will just keep hearing me say “WAIT!!! NOT YET!!! HOLD ON!!! DON’T EAT THAT!!!!”
This recipe looked really straight forward – mix dry ingredients, cut in the butter, mix in the buttermilk, scoop and bake.
Kevin says to me “This tastes like I’m eating a salt lick! How much salt did you put in these??”
We preheated the oven to 400 F degrees and lined a baking sheet with parchment paper. My assistant and I mixed the flour, baking powder, baking soda and kosher salt in a large mixing bow.
Next, we cut the cold butter into the dry ingredients. I ended up needing to take over the pastry blender, but my assistant decided that he could use the butter knife to keep helping me.
The recipe said to mix the buttermilk in slowly. I poured the buttermilk into a 1/4 cup liquid measuring cup and allowed my baking buddy to pour each one into the mix. Then I mixed it with a large spoon. The mixture came together quickly in a nice moist, but shaggy mixture.
We used a large cookie scoop to scoop the mixture onto the lined baking sheet and popped the biscuits in the oven for 15 minutes. I snuck a quick lick of the mix as I was cleaning and noticed that it seemed a little salty but thought…hum…well let’s see how they turn out.
Well….I quickly realized that the hot oven was melting some of butter that I cut into the biscuits (probably not small enough in my rush to get the recipe finished) and I opened the oven door and pulled the parchment paper off and switched to a rimmed baking sheet and quickly put them back into oven. When the timer went off, I was so excited to give them a try. I plated them for everyone, we sat down and got ready to dig in. I look over at Kevin and he takes a bite, and then makes his disgusted face and goes, “This tastes like I’m eating a salt lick! How much salt did you put in these??” I got up, ran to the cookbook, checked, and then double checked and said “1 tablespoon, thats what it says in the cookbook”. I tried mine…it was super super salty! We made the executive decision that these biscuits were not edible…woomp woomp… (In reality this probably wasn’t the worst thing either since my baking assistant also may or may not have sneezed right into the bowl about 10 seconds before I scooped them out…oops)
I hate failing. I hate making things that people don’t like to eat. I love baking to see the smile on people’s face when they try something that I make, especially the first time I try something new. Making a bad recipe sucks! Especially when it is the first recipe I make from a new cookbook that I am so excited about using. I contacted the publisher of the cookbook and asked them about the recipe. They sent me back an email asking “Did you check the corrections page of our website??” WAIT WHAT???? So…apparently there is a recipe correction for soooo many recipes from this cookbook. I was so amazed and bummed. This is not an extra step that I want to do before I go to bake. They sent me the corrections, which had to do with the baking soda and buttermilk (all of which were correctly printed in the cookbook) but it didn’t say anything about the salt. I’m still waiting for a reply to my second email about the salt. I’ll update you when I hear back!
Sooooo….as much as I hate failing…I knew that I needed to try again. Sunday morning, I woke up and got to work quickly whipping the ingredients together by myself this time. My baking assistant was busy getting some daddy snuggles while reading on the couch while I was baking. I followed the recipe again and this time I only added 1 teaspoon of salt. I also added 3 tablespoons of sugar to the dry goods and sprinkled a little extra on top. (I’m a sucker for a slightly sweet biscuit – it all goes back to the OG of biscuits…The Flying Biscuit….but thats another story for another day.)
I’m happy to say that…they turned out delicious!!! The biscuits were tender, soft, fluffy, slightly sweet from the sugar and not too salty – phew! Everyone enjoyed them – even the boys who devoured several of them. Happy to report back too, that Kevin no longer described them as “salt lick-like”.
Final Thoughts:
- These are quick, easy & yummy biscuits for a weekend morning
- The leftovers kept nicely in a ziplock bag and worked for a quick morning breakfast for the boys on Monday
- Happy I solved the salt riddle
- I’m pretty bummed about feeling like I need to check all the future recipes I want to make with the corrections page of the Bake From Scratch website
Recipe – Buttermilk Drop Biscuits – Adapted from Baked From Scratch
- 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 3 tablespoon sugar (plus more to sprinkle on top)
- 3/4 cup cold butter, cubed
- 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons whole buttermilk
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400 F degrees. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper
- In a bowl use your pasty blender to mix together flour, baking powder, salt, baking soda and sugar.
- Using your pasty blender cut the cold butter into the flour until it is crumbly.
- Mix the buttermilk into the mixture in 1/4 cup increments ending with the last 2 tablespoons. Stop mixing when all the mixture is most and still shaggy.
- Scoop the biscuits onto the baking sheet with a large cookie scoop
- Sprinkle the biscuits lightly with sugar
- Bake for 12-15 minutes until the edges are browned and the biscuits are set
- Cool on the baking try for 5 minutes and serve warm with butter, jelly or jam, or cinnamon sugar
- Enjoy!
Allie and the Oven 
One thought on “Did you check the corrections page?”