Cat Head Biscuits

As promised here is the pictorial on cat head biscuits.

A little history might be in order because of the name. Maybe the name cat head fosters some concern, but it really only refers the size of the biscuits, as in big as a cats head.  Way, many years ago when I first encountered these things that’s the name I was given and I’ve always called them that. However as I’ve gotten dumber over the years, what I’ve found is that these should rightfully be called a drop biscuit.

That really isn’t a deal breaker here because a cat head biscuit is just a larger drop biscuit as far as I can tell. These can easily be made larger.

To describe these things more I would stress that these are a fluffy biscuit and not a flaky biscuit. Right out of the oven they are light and moist with a little touch of crusty crunch here and there, a fair taste of buttermilk tempered by just a hint of sweetness and just enough salt to enhance the flavors.

Out of hand with butter, under sausage gravy, with beans, or chicken or my favorite, cold with some good ham and a little honey mustard and made into a sandwich.

Easy to make and good eatin’. My guess is that if you serve your family these biscuits just once you’ll be making them again and again. One of the few recipes I come back to over and over.

So let’s make some biscuits!

Ingredients

1 ½ cups (360ml) of Southern flour plus ½ cup (120ml) more to use while forming biscuits. I use White Lilly brand. If you can’t find that or similar then use a 3:1 mix of AP and cake flour. You could just use straight up AP flour too, but they won't be quite the same.

2 teaspoons (10ml) baking powder

1 tablespoon (15ml) sugar

1 big pinch of salt. A 3 fingered pinch, whatever that amounts to.

3 tablespoons (45ml) room temperature butter plus more to grease a pan

1 cup (240ml) buttermilk plus some more to brush on top of the biscuits

The goods: There’s the bowl with 1 ½ cups of flour, the sugar, salt and baking soda. The room temp butter, the buttermilk and the extra buttermilk, the plate with the ½ cup flour and finally the greased cake pan.

A note about the cake pan. This pan is a little big. This recipe fits better in a 7 X 2 inch round cake pan or a disposable aluminum pie tin, but these weren’t available at the time.

Directions

Move an oven rack one step above center and preheat the oven to 475F (245C.) Grease the baking pan with the extra butter. Using a whisk mix the dry ingredients well. Add the butter and using your well-floured fingers, work the butter in till it’s grainy. Add the buttermilk and with a spatula mix it just till the flour is barely mixed in.

You might see just a bit of dry flour in a place or two. It should be so wet you’ll wonder how you can work with it. That’s good!

You’re shooting for 9 biscuits. Using the spatula scoop up and appropriate amount and plop it down on the flour in the plate. Using the fingers of both hands flip some flour over the wet blob of dough and get your fingers under it enough to pick it up and land it in the palm on one hand, then into the other palm and back again only one more time, gently knocking the excess flour off and barely forming it into a ball. Toss it into the greased pan and repeat this process till you run out of dough. Ten biscuits, 8? Don't sweat it. You’ll have biscuit stuff on your hands at this point and this next bit is optional, but I just rub my hands together over the biscuits in the baking pan to drop all the extra dough in there with the biscuits. No waste. 

Take the extra buttermilk and put it into the bowl the dough came from and using a pastry brush mix the buttermilk with the leftover stuff in the bowl to liquefy it and brush the resulting wash over the biscuits in the baking pan. Again, no waste.

Into the oven for 14 minutes.

About the cooking time. I typically use a digital thermometer and aim for 195F (90C.)

Now the drop biscuit to cat head biscuit conversion. Use a smaller pan, make bigger biscuits, lower the oven temperature and bake for more time. I'm sure you can figure it out. If you use the digital thermometer then you only need to adjust the temperature so the outsides of the biscuits don’t cook too fast. You might get to 350F for 30 minutes if you make them big enough. Once you dial your biscuits in you can make these things in your sleep.

And save the leftover flour. Just run it through a strainer and into a jar and keep it around for next time or for whatever your imagination finds a use for it, like maybe thickening sausage gravy. And once again, no waste.

If you get really good at this biscuit making, it’s not even messy.