Two Ingredient Cream Biscuit Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How do you make back to basics 2 ingredient biscuits? ›

To make two-ingredient biscuits, all you have to do is add self-rising flour to a bowl on top of a scale, (I use about one ounce of flour per biscuit I'm planning to bake), then pour in an equal amount of heavy cream by weight. Stir the two ingredients together, and you've got your basic biscuit dough.

The two keys to success in making the best biscuits are handling the dough as little as possible as well as using very cold solid fat (butter, shortening, or lard) and cold liquid. When the biscuits hit the oven, the cold liquid will start to evaporate creating steam which will help our biscuits get very tall.

Milk and butter

It's an easy substitute that'll work for most recipes. The butter adds extra fat to the milk, making its fat percentage similar to that of heavy cream. Combine 1/4 cup (57 grams) of melted butter with 3/4 cup (178 mL) of milk and mix thoroughly to make 1 cup (237 ml) of heavy cream.

Heavy cream is a great substitute for milk in a baking recipe, but it does need to be diluted slightly. Because heavy cream boasts a fat content of 36% to 40%, using a half cup of heavy cream mixed with a half cup of water will be your best bet for replacing one cup of milk.

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.

Use a 1-to-3 ratio of butter and whole milk in your recipe. For every 1 cup (237 mL) of heavy cream your recipe calls for, use ¹/₄ cup (57 g) of butter and a ³⁄₄ c (180 mL) of milk. Simply place the butter on your counter and wait for it to become room temperature before stirring it into the whole milk with a whisk.

Similarly to half-and-half, milk makes a good heavy cream substitute when it's combined with melted butter. Combine 3/4 cup milk and 1/4 cup melted butter for every cup of heavy cream. This mixture is not suitable for whipping. Best for: cooking and baking.

Substituting Melted Butter and Milk for Heavy Cream

If you have butter and milk (whole milk or even half-and-half work best), you can make your own heavy cream substitute. To make 1 cup of heavy cream, melt 1/4 cup of butter and slowly whisk in 3/4 cup milk.

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.

Are biscuits better with buttermilk or milk? ›

Buttermilk adds a nice tang to the biscuit flavor and helps them rise better.

If you add too much liquid, it will not ruin the biscuits, but the dough will be very sticky and more difficult to work with. If you find your dough is too sticky, you may add a bit more all-purpose flour OR you can make them more like drop biscuits (dropping balls of dough on a pan instead of rolling out the dough.

It's easy to make a self-rising flour substitute at home. Here's our Test Kitchen's simple method to make self-rising flour: For every cup of self-rising flour, substitute one cup of all-purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, ½ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon baking soda.

The principal ingredients of biscuit dough are soft wheat flour, sugar, fat, and water. They are mixed with other minor ingredients (such as baking powder, skimmed milk, emulsifier, and sodium metabisulphite) to form dough containing a well- developed gluten network.

If you're starting with a biscuit recipe that calls for shortening, you can swap in butter or margarine at a 1:1 ratio. We even have a recipe on the site from Sweet Laurel Bakery that uses almond flour instead of all-purpose and coconut oil instead of shortening or butter.