I baked a few of these right before dashing out to a class I was taking Monday night, took one for myself, and left the rest for Caleb to try. His next text read, "OMG biscuits". Do you need to know more?
The truth is there is basically nothing I love more than bread, except bread and melted cheese. That might come as a surprise to some people. Maybe my heroic levels of dessert consumption have suggested otherwise. Maybe you've never met me in person or you haven't spent much time poking around on this site. The truth is, in the battle of chocolate cake versus cheesy bacon monkey bread, I'd much rather eat the latter. (Not that the former isn't delicious.)
Knowing what you know about me now, imagine my delight when I saw these chipotle cheddar biscuits on the Baked: New Frontiers in Baking recipe schedule for Baked Sunday Mornings. Fresh from a cooking class that included some spectacularly lofty biscuits, I felt like I was ready to take these on and apply my new secrets... until I realized these cheddar biscuits are the drop variety rather than the cut variety of biscuit. Oh well. I'll just make a separate batch of "regular" buttermilk biscuits soon.
These chipotle cheddar biscuits were very fast and easy to make, the dough came together in under 15 minutes (I did have some Tillamook sharp cheddar I'd already grated). Basically, you just throw all the dry ingredients together into a large bowl, including a full tablespoon of chipotle powder. I don't actually have any chipotle powder, but I do have the greatest ground hot pepper mix ever, courtesy of my awesome Dad, so I used that instead. [Whoa.... a full tablespoon tickles. Don't sneeze into the bowl. I didn't, I promise.] I should also note that I hate measuring ground black pepper, so I opted for assuming that 7 grinds of pepper more or less equated to the called for 1 teaspoon.
To the dry ingredients, you'll gently work some cold butter in until the mixture looks like coarse sand. Now, you'll add the cheese (so much cheese! don't be scared), stir that around, then add the wet ingredients (buttermilk (whole milk plus white vinegar in my case) and an egg). This batter is quite wet, which I confess I didn't expect given the number of Baked scones recipes I've made where I needed to add more liquid to get the dough to come together. In this case, I worried that I'd somehow misread the amounts and overdone it on the milk.
In lieu of baking these cheddar biscuits immediately, I opted to scoop the dough out into muffin tins lined with scraps of parchment paper for future baking. I did this mostly because it was 1am and I certainly have no business stuffing myself with cheddar biscuits that late at night, but also because I strongly believe in the power of giving high butter doughs time to chill. I did use an ice cream scoop to portion out the dough, but I didn't level the scoop, so I wound up with 12 large biscuits rather than the 20 specified by the recipe. I froze the biscuit rounds for about 48 hours, then when I wanted to bake them, I simply took them out of the freezer to partially defrost while the oven was preheating.
I needed to bake my biscuits an additional ~3ish minutes beyond the stated 20 minute mark, likely because mine were larger than intended and baked from mostly frozen rather than room temperature. The apartment smelled AMAZING while these were baking, and I was beyond impatient to tear one apart as soon as these cheddar biscuits were done. These biscuits are truly delightful and I highly recommend that you stop bothering to read this post and just go make them for yourself.
Fresh from the oven, the chipotle/hot pepper + sharp cheddar cheese combination is perfection. There's nothing dull or bland about these biscuits. Despite being crammed with cheese, they are feather-light, with a delicate interior and soft texture. They wouldn't be out of place at any meal... try them with a fried egg and some greens for breakfast, as the bun of a sandwich for lunch (I'd recommend fried chicken for a truly decadent meal), or as a snack any time of day.
Find the recipe for these here and have a look at what the other bakers created from this definitely-a-keeper recipe!
I love how you froze these before baking them, I bet that would have helped the problem that I had when they spread out so much. I made about 12 too because that's how they were scooped and they spread a lot!