Cheesy Bacon Biscuits

Warm buttery biscuits, packed full of cheese and bacon goodness – these might be the ideal stoner snack.  When I found the recipe for these I was a little intimidated by the prep time, since I’d never actually made biscuits from scratch before, but I figured what the hell and decided to give it a shot.  Do it, it’s worth it.  I actually had to make these twice to get a blog entry completed - the first time they disappeared before I could take pictures of the finished product!  I suspect the guys ate them...

Cheesy Bacon Biscuits

Prep time: 30 minutes

Cook time: 20 minutes

What you’ll need:

·         2 cups all-purpose flour

·         1 teaspoon baking powder

·         ¾ teaspoon salt

·         4-5 tablespoons butter, cubed and chilled

·         10 tablespoons milk

·         4 tablespoons vegetable oil

·         1 egg

·         10 slices thick-cut bacon (Use pepper bacon.  You're welcome.)

·         1 ¼ cup shredded cheese (whatever your favorite is, I used sharp cheddar)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375° F.  Honestly, I wouldn't turn the oven on until after you've fried your bacon, but you do what feels good.  Grease a standard muffin pan and set it aside.  Usually I use butter to grease stuff, but with a muffin tin your only option is pretty much a spray on.  Pam is your friend, otherwise these little suckers will be hanging out in that pan until kingdom come.  Put the muffin pan aside, we’ll deal with it later.

Fry the bacon in a skillet until it has reached its desired crispiness.  A long time ago I was under the impression that there was some magical trick to frying bacon.  There isn’t, just put it in the damn pan.  You don’t even need the Pam, it makes its own non-stick grease.  Cool on paper towel to absorb some of that delicious grease then chop up and set aside.

Combine your dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt) in a bowl and mix them up until they’re fully assimilated. 

This is the tricky part, but I promise it’s the only tricky part.  Get out your butter – it should be cut into little cubes and straight out of the fridge.  Don’t melt your butter.  Do not melt your butter.  Seriously, don’t.  Don’t even heat it up.  Anyhow.  For this you’ll need to find your handy dandy pastry cutter.  It looks like this:

Actually I don't own one of these either.  Maybe Skul will get me one for Christmas.

 Don’t have a pastry cutter?  That’s ok neither do I; just grab a couple of clean knives.  Or your fingers really.  When you do this you’re not mixing or mashing the butter into the dry stuff, and it won’t combine completely.  There will be chunks.  Basically you want to cut up your little cubes of butter into smaller bits of butter that are all intermixed with your dry ingredients.  Think of the butter as the 1% and your flour mix as the 99%.  They're there together in the same big mixing bowl, and they interact when they have to, but they're still pretty much in the category of  separate but not really that equal.  There is a class struggle of butter and flour happening in your bowl.  When it’s in there enough you’ll have a semi-chunky, crumbly mixture of little hunks of butter and dry ingredients.  It won’t look perfect, but you really don’t want it to anyhow!

In a separate bowl, whisk together the milk, oil, and egg.  Please tell me you own a whisk.  We're cooking big kid stoner food now, not ramen noodles.  Buy a whisk.  If nothing else it’s fun to play with when you’re out of your mind.

Using a rubber spatula, stir your wet ingredients in with your flour-butter mix.  Your dry ingredients should all moisten but there will still be chunks!  Let the chunks stay, you want them.  Then add in your bacon and cheese, folding gently until all has been incorporated.  Don’t be nervous about sticking your hands in there!

When you're done mixing, the end result will look something like this, and feel sticky to the touch like canned biscuits.

At last, grab that muffin tin!  Spoon your batter evenly into the pre-greased pan and pop in the oven for 20-22 minutes, or until your biscuits are a lovely golden brown on top.  You should have enough batter for 12 biscuits.  I usually set a timer for about 18 minutes to check on everything.  Actually set two timers.  In case you get distracted.  Don’t lie, you know you do.

Pre-baked biscuit goodness...

...and post-baked biscuit goodness.  Yum!

Skul says:  These were awesome!  Try adding some garlic or some onions in too.

Ghost says:  I’m pretty happy with how they turned out.  Serve them hot with butter!  I might try adding some ranch spices sprinkled on top the next time I make these.

Recipe adapted from The Brown Eyed Baker - http://www.browneyedbaker.com/2010/09/08/bacon-onion-cheddar-biscuits/