Cheddar Biscuits with Crispy Cheese Skirt

My Crispy Cheddar Biscuits are my flaky buttermilk biscuits taken to the next level! They’re not only stuffed with cheese on the inside, but they sit on a pile of cheese that bakes into a crispy cheese skirt!

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My Grandma Olga Mae made incredible buttermilk biscuits. Every Sunday morning, before she left for church, she made biscuits. She would leave them on the counter under a napkin for our family dinner when she got home. Not all of those biscuits made it to the dinner table. Thus began my obsession with biscuits. It became my life goal to make biscuits as good as Olga Mae's, and after years of hard work, my buttermilk biscuits were born!

Now that I've mastered the art of the flaky biscuit, why not take them to the next level? Let's crunchify them! There aren't a lot of things that can't be made better with a little crunch. Whether it's croutons in your salad, nuts in your cookies, or chips in your sandwich - crunch makes it better! So I thought, how can I crunchify my biscuits? Why, dress them up in a cheese skirt, of course!

Ingredients

• All-purpose flour No fancy flours here. I use King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour, but any brand will do.
• Baking soda Baking soda reacts with the buttermilk right away to give your biscuits a nice lift.
• Baking powder Baking powder also works immediately when combined with liquid (the buttermilk), but is “double acting”, meaning it also lifts your biscuits when it hits the heat. To ensure you get all that lift, check the expiration date of your baking powder. You want to use the freshest possible to ensure you get tall biscuits!
• Sugar Just a touch of sugar enhances the sweetness of the unsalted butter, but it also balances the acidity of the buttermilk. A true win-win ingredient!
• Salt Unless your doctor told you to ditch sodium, never leave out salt! Whether baking or cooking, salt enhances the flavor of all the ingredients. Friend not foe, unless otherwise directed.
• Buttermilk Buttermilk helps to create an overall taller, tastier, flakier, fluffier biscuit. Who doesn’t want all that? I use 2 tablespoons more buttermilk than in my regular buttermilk biscuit recipe, to make sure all the cheese and the dry ingredients get mixed in well.
• Butter Always use cold butter. The high heat of your oven hits the cold butter, and the butter releases steam that pushes up and out of the dough, creating flaky layers as a fabulous side effect. I love science!
• Cheddar Cheese You'll need 1 cup for inside your biscuit and ½ cup for your crispy cheesy bottom!

Variations

• Spicy - Try adding a diced jalapeño for a delicious Jalapeño Cheddar Biscuit!
• Swiss - Switch out your cheddar with nutty Gruyère cheese like I do in my Gruyère Biscuits with Bacon and Chives.
• Drop it like it's hot - Add an extra four tablespoons of buttermilk and drop or scoop dough onto piles of cheese on your sheet pan, for Drop Biscuit version of these cheddar biscuits.

Instructions

• Mix the dry ingredients In a bowl, or in your food processor, measure all of your dry ingredients. For consistent results, I always recommend weighing your flour. If you do not have a scale, fluff up your flour with a spoon, scoop it into your measuring cup, and use a knife or other straight edged utensil to level the flour across the measuring cup. Whisk or pulse together.

• Cut in your butter I usually work fast and use my fingers to pinch, squeeze, and mix the butter into the dry ingredients, just like I do when making the topping for a crisp or crumble, but sometimes I go the food processor route. If I use the food processor, I freeze my butter for 10-15 minutes beforehand so I don't end up breaking it up too much with the machine. A handful of bigger butter chunks mixed in is one of the ways that you give your biscuits nice layers. Give the machine about 5 to 6 good pulses.
• Toss in your cheese In a bowl, add in one cup of cheddar and toss around in the flour/butter mixture, to coat all the individual shreds. This makes sure you get cheese in every bite!

• Add cold buttermilk Whether I cut in my butter by hand or by machine, I mix in the buttermilk in a bowl with a flat spatula, rice paddle, or Danish dough whisk. It won't look like you have enough liquid, but trust the process! Everything will come together.

• Cut and stack I learned my biscuit stacking process from Brian Hart Hoffman of Bake From Scratch magazine. Instead of rolling out your dough and cutting out biscuits, I pat the dough into a square, cut it into quarters, and stack them on top of each other, like doughy legos. Then I just give 'em a big smush down toward the counter until they've formed a single square again. I repeat this process a total of four times and each cut-and-stack adds more layers to your biscuits. Also, each time you cut and stack, you incorporate more of the stray dry bits. It all comes together!

• Cut out your biscuits Press the dough into a ½ inch thick rectangle, Using a biscuit or cookie cutter, cut out your biscuits. Do not twist the cutter when cutting them out. That would  seal the edges of the biscuits, keeping them from fully rising. Just press straight down and lift straight up. Gather your scraps as you go and gently re-stack them together, press out to ½ inch, and cut as many biscuits as you can. Place on a parchment paper lined quarter sheet pan and place in the freezer for 10-15 minutes before baking.

• Chill your biscuits Chilling your biscuit dough gets the butter cold again and cold butter plus hot oven equals flakiness! This is because, as the heat hits the butter, steam is released, and this pushes the layers you've created apart even further. Oh boy, science is cool! Place your cut biscuits on a parchment paper lined small sheet pan and place them in the freezer for 10-15 minutes. In the meantime, you can preheat your oven and make cheese piles.

• Cheese your biscuits While your biscuits are chilling out, you'll want to make little piles of cheese on a parchment paper lined large sheet pan. I try to cut out 8 biscuits and make 8 two tablespoon piles of cheddar, evenly spaced on the sheet pan. Remove your biscuits from the freezer and place one on each cheese pile and give them a little wiggle. You should see a little bit of cheese peeking out around each biscuit.
• Egg wash Although these biscuits would taste great baked as is, an egg wash will give the tops of our biscuits a shiny brown top, and everyone knows brown food tastes better! The proteins in both the white and the yolk promote browning, while the fats in the yolk add a nice shine. Beautiful and delicious!

• Bake hot and fast Now that you are a scientist, put your oven on 450° F and bake your biscuits for about 15 to 18 minutes, or until golden brown. The high heat will do all the things; brown the biscuits while creating all the layers. Amazing!

Looking for more biscuits? Try these:

• Ham and Swiss Buttermilk Biscuits
• Buttermilk Biscuits and Sausage Gravy
• Chicken Fried Steak Biscuits with Country Gravy
• Breakfast Strawberry Shortcake with Whipped Greek Yogurt Cream
• Large Batch Freezer Biscuits