Lighter Buttermilk Biscuits

Book Update: I finished “From Mama’s Table to Mine” by Bobby Deen. The recipes look delicious, but the calorie counts are terrible. Instead of creating real servings of food, one is expected to eat a bird-size serving of something and voila! It has less calories! Of course it does! Nobody should have to split a 9″ chicken pot pie between 8 people for a main course. I still like my America’s Test Kitchen “Comfort Food Makeovers” in that regard. Their calorie counts are a tad higher, but it is a real serving. Their 9×13 chicken pot pie feeds 8 people. That sounds more like it.

Recipe: I’ve tried this recipe a few times and it works really well in making a high, consistently good biscuit. You can use AP flour, white whole wheat or whole wheat flour. Whole wheat flour will definitely give you that wheat-y taste. I like this method because the dough comes together easily. Make sure you use a sharp biscuit cutter! And don’t twist the cutter, simply stamp out the biscuits. Twisting the biscuit may create a seal and keep the biscuit from rising well. Keep your ingredients COLD.

Per 2.5″ biscuit: Calories: 160 (instead of 300) and 4.5 grams of fat (instead of 16) and 3 grams of saturated fat (instead of 9)

Buttermilk Biscuits
yield 12 biscuits

4 Tb. cold, unsalted butter, in 1/2″ pieces
1.5 oz. 1/3 less fat cream cheese (neufschatel), cut into 1/2″ pieces
3 cups (15 oz.) all-purpose flour (I’ve used whole wheat and white whole wheat, too. White whole wheat was easier.)
1 Tb. sugar
1 Tb. baking powder (preferably aluminum free)
1/2 tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. salt
1 and 1/4 cups buttermilk

1. Put the butter and cream cheese in the freezer for about an hour. I did mine in 15 minutes and it was pretty solid. Preheat the oven to 450. Cover a cookie sheet with silicone or parchment paper.

2. In the food processor: pulse your flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt a few times to combine. Add the frozen butter and cream cheese. Pulse about 15 times. Dump the mixture into a great big bowl.

3. Pour in your buttermilk and stir with a spatula a few times to make a dough. Knead the dough on a floured surface about 8-10 times. It should come together towards the end. Flatten this out into a disk about 3/4″ thick. Cut your biscuits with a biscuit cutter. I used a medium and large cutter.

4. Bring your scraps together and knead to make more biscuits and repeat using the rest of the dough. Put the biscuits about 1″ apart or more. Bake for 5 minutes. THEN, drop the temperature to 400 degrees and bake another 12-15 minutes. Cool and eat.

Then … you can make a sandwich!