Super yummy, very easy Christmas biscuit recipe - NurtureStore (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to an excellent biscuit? ›

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.

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.

If your biscuits are falling apart…

To avoid this, set your measuring cup on the counter and use a spoon to remove the flour from the bag and tip it into the cup; then use something with a flat edge, like a knife, to level it off before adding it to your mixing bowl.

So what's the final verdict? Butter is the winner here. The butter biscuits were moister with that wonderful butter taste and melt-in-your mouth texture. I'd be curious to test out substituting half or just two tablespoons of the butter with shortening to see if you get the best of both.

As far as brands of flour, White Lily “all-purpose” flour has been my go-to for biscuit making. It's a soft red winter wheat, and the low protein and low gluten content keep biscuits from becoming too dense.

The extra fat in the heavy cream is helpful because buttermilk in stores is often “low-fat” buttermilk. Buttermilk. The buttermilk adds a tangy flavor to the biscuit and helps hydrate the dough just enough to create a nice structure for our biscuits.

Just as important as the fat is the liquid used to make your biscuits. Our Buttermilk Biscuit recipe offers the choice of using milk or buttermilk. Buttermilk is known for making biscuits tender and adding a zippy tang, so we used that for this test.

In general, with baking you want to use unsalted butter so that you can control the amount of salt in your final product. I tend to follow this rule, but I did notice that even the biscuit recipe that I liked the best only called for a small amount of salt.

Freshly baked, made from scratch biscuit with blueberries mixed in and topped with sweet icing.

How is Marie biscuit made? ›

The biscuit is round and usually has the name embossed upon its top surface, the edges of which are also embossed with an intricate design. It is made with wheat flour, sugar, palm oil or sunflower seed oil and, unlike the rich tea biscuit, is typically vanilla-flavoured.

Carla's secret to making flaky biscuits is simple: grate the butter. Grating the butter creates shards that are uniform in size, ensuring they're evenly mixed with the flour. But in order to properly grate it, you need to make sure your butter is cold — very, very cold.

But if you chill your pan of biscuits in the fridge before baking, not only will the gluten relax (yielding more tender biscuits), the butter will harden up. And the longer it takes the butter to melt as the biscuits bake, the more chance they have to rise high and maintain their shape. So, chill... and chill.

Fat and moisture are crucial components in biscuit texture

And when cutting the fat, make sure you don't cut the pieces too small; otherwise, the small flecks of fat can create minuscule air pockets that turn into crumbs.

CHARACTERISTICS OF GOOD BISCUITS

A good biscuit is symmetrical in shape, has vertical sides, a level and fairly smooth top, and is covered with a tender, golden brown crust. The inside is light, fluffy, flaky, creamy white, free from yellow or brown spots, and the small 'holes are evenly distributed.

Use a sift to mix your dry ingredients.

Sift together all your dry ingredients instead of simply mixing. This will smooth out your lumps and you'll have a much more consistent bake. Some people will also freeze their dry ingredients to keep the dough as cold as possible. Again, cold dough is what makes a flaky biscuit.

Sugar and Salt: Add flavor. We don't add a lot of sugar (just 1 tablespoon). Cold Butter: I love using European-style salted butter, like Kerrygold or Plugra, since they make our biscuits tender and delicious. If you don't have European salted butter, plain butter works (salted or unsalted).

Parle G: the King of Biscuits.