I know you must be thinking, Biscuits again??? And by that I mean baking powder, or tea-biscuits, not British Cookies. Not scones either. Biscuits. Buttermilk Biscuits. Light as air. Flakey. Fluffy.
In my opinion, you can never have too many recipes for biscuits. And when you are living with an empty next small batch recipes for things like this come in all too handy!
I confess, I am a biscuit lover. I can never get enough of them, and I love to try new recipes. I also like to make the recipes I have more in fitting with a small household like ours.
I have always loved Buttermilk Biscuits most of all. I love the slight tang that buttermilk adds and I love the way they always rise high and beautiful in a hot oven.
Buttermilk always makes for a beautiful crumb. You really can't beat it when it comes to making perfect biscuits.
I know I could bake whole recipes of these, but I have to be honest here. I just don't personally think that baked goods which have been frozen have the same flavour as fresh baked goods. Especially things like biscuits.
The longer you have them in the freezer the more they deteriorate and the larger the chance of them picking up other flavours. If you do freeze these, or any biscuit for that matter, make sure they are really well wrapped, airtight.
And make sure that you plan on using them within at the very most 3 months. I would not keep them longer. One exception to frozen goodies is cookies. I am quite fond of frozen cookies.
I used to think if I froze the extra cookies I would be safe from eating them. I would be better able to ration myself.
Turns out frozen baked cookies, or even unbaked for that matter taste just as good as they do thawed or fresh out of the oven. Yes I am the Cookie Monster.
It is much, much better for me if I make smaller batches of things and then use them up pronto. That way I don't have a lot of temptation hanging around in my freezer.
I think you will find that these are gorgeous baking powder biscuits. Back home they also call them tea biscuits.
Look at that tender crumb. These are so so very flaky and delicious.
I did a search to see if I could find out why in Canada they sometimes call them Tea Biscuits. I couldn't find any answers. I can only surmise that they are meant to be enjoyed with tea??? If you know, enlighten me, please! I have an inquiring mind.
These are biscuits that practically melt in your mouth. See that high rise? That comes from a light touch and not twisting the biscuit cutter.
Twisting the cutter when you are cutting out biscuits seals the edges. Your biscuits will not rise and high and they will be lopsided. True dat!
Cold butter is best. You don't want your butter softening before it goes into the oven. You want it to start melting as soon as the heat of the oven hits it, so that lots of little airy pockets are created.
You also want to use cold buttermilk for the same reason. It also creates a beautiful tender crumb. And who doesn't love that! Also the closer your biscuits are to each other on the pan (without actually touching) forces the biscuits to rise higher. Another Biscuit fact.
Quick & Easy Buttermilk Biscuits for Two
Ingredients
- 1 cup (140g) all purpose (plain) flour
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder (not soda)
- 1 1/2 tsp caster sugar (granulated sugar)
- pinch salt
- 4 TBS cold butter
- 1/2 cup (120ml) buttermilk
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 225*C/425*F/ gas mark 7. Line a very small baking tray with some baking paper. Set aside.
- Sift the flour into a bowl along with the baking powder. Stir in the salt and sugar. Drop in the butter. Cut it into the flour mixture using a pastry blender, or two round bladed knives, until the mixture resembles coarse bread crumbs. Stir in the buttermilk slowly wih a fork, until you have a moist dough which clings together.
- Tip out onto a lightly floured board and knead gently a few times. Pat out to a 1 inch thick square, six by six.
- Using a 3 inch cutter and a sharp up and down motion (do NOT twist) stamp out four biscuits. If you have much in the way of scraps, and there shouldn't be much, you can repat and stamp. (Re-pat biscuits will not be picture perfect.)
- Place onto the baking sheet and bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes until golden brown.
- Serve warm, split and spread with your favourite toppings.
Did you make this recipe?
It is such a miserable wet and rainy day today.Oh how I am longing for a cool, crisp autumn day with lots of pretty leaf colour and acorns beneath my feet. I think today we are expecting a lot of rain. That means sloshing not crunching.
This content (written and photography) is the sole property of The English Kitchen. Any reposting or misuse is not permitted. If you are reading this elsewhere, please know that it is stolen content and you may report it to me at: mariealicejoan at aol dot com Thanks so much for visiting. Do come again!
These particular biscuits are very particular to the Maritime Provinces of Canada. Those beautiful provinces anchored on the East Coast of my beautiful homeland, consisting of four provinces.
Newfoundland, an Island where my parents got married, also loving know as "The Rock." Nova Scotia, where I say I am from. A peninsula anchored by the Isthmus of Chebucto to mainland Canada.
New Brunwswick, the part of Canada tha Nova Scotia is anchored to, and Prince Edward Island. Island of my birth and home to Lucy Maude Montgomery and Anne of Green Gables.
That is the Maritimes in a nutshell and what I consider to be my home. No matter how far away from them I travel, or how long I am away, I consider myself a Maritimer at heart.
These Biscuits may be known by a variety of names. Angel Biscuits is one. French Biscuits is another.
My ex In-Laws lived on Prince Edward Island and we spent several weeks there in the summer months. The community they lived in, Saint Eleanors, at that time was largely populated with retired Military folk.
My FIL had been a cook in the airforce. Both he and my MIL had been born and bred on the Island so it was quite natural for them to want to return there upon retirement, to spend their golden years.
There was an old guy and his wife that lived directly across from them. The Kenny's, also an armforced retiree couple. They had Acadia ancestry, or at least Mrs. Kenny did.
Every summer when we arrived we could almost rely that within the first 24 hours Mrs Kenny would be sending over a bag of freshly baked French Biscuits as she called them, or Maritime Biscuits as is their proper name.
Skunks used to be a huge problem on the Island. They probably still are. I remember one year Mr Kenny had made a skunk trap for his front yard, with every intention of putting waste to whatever skunk he captured.
It became somewhat of a joke amongst the male retirees, this skunk trap. Every morning Mr Kenny would inspect his trap and come up empty.
One day I came across this recipe in a community cookbook for Maritime Biscuits. They sounded like to be exactly the same as the ones Mrs Kenny made.
I had to write the recipe down. It went into my Big Blue Binder, like all the good recipes do. And I have been enjoying them ever since.
They have a beautiful flaky texture, like any good biscuit, and a nice rise. But they rise a bit like a dinner roll would.
Not precisely up, and somewhat out. They are lovely and light as air. As light as an angel's wings some might say!
The dough can be somewhat sticky. Try hard not to knead too much flour back into them when you are patting them out ready to cut. Just be generous with the flour on the bottom and somewhat generous with the flour on top.
I dip my cutter into flour with every biscuit I cut so that it doesn't stick. I use a 3 inch round sharp cutter,straight edged.
Like any biscuit, do not twist them as you are cutting them. A strong, straight up and down cut will do the trick. You will need a spatula to lift them onto the baking sheet.
Do leave plenty of space between them for them to spread and rise. Unless you are not bothered by soft sided biscuits. We like our sides crisp, like our bacon.
If there is one downside to these biscuits it would have to be that they really are best eaten on the day. It is the same with any bread that contains yeast.
You can however, nicely refresh them the next day in a slow oven. You can also freeze them, properly wrapped for several months if need be.
These are wonderful served warm, not long out of the oven. Lovely with cold butter and preserves, or even peanut butter.
They are fantastic served with soups or salads. They are also fantastic served with thick stews that have plenty of gravy to be mopped up. These biscuits are perfect at mopping up.
To be honest, I enjoy them with anything and everything. Yes, I am a carboholic. Through and through.
Don't be tempted to use butter in place of the shortening. I have never seen or tasted these made with anything else, except perhaps lard, which is what they would have used in the early pioneer days.
Maritime Biscuits
Ingredients:
- 1/4 cup (60ml) warm water
- 1 TBS sugar
- 1 TBS regular yeast
- 2 1/2 cups flour (350g) plain all purpose flour
- 1 TBS sugar
- 1/2 tsp soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup (110g) vegetable shortening
- 1 cup (240ml) buttermilk
Instructions:
- Preheat the oven to 200*C/400*F/ gas mark 6. Line a couple of baking sheets with baking paper. Set aside.
- Mix the sugar, warm water and yeast together in a cup and leave to dissolve until foamy and double in size.
- Warm the buttermilk slightly to lukewarm.
- Sift the flour into a bowl along with the soda and baking powder. Stir in the salt and sugar. Drop in the shortening and cut it in using a pastry blender until the mixture resembles coarse bread crumbs, with some larger bits and more smaller bits.
- Add the yeast mixture to the warm buttermilk and then add this all at once to the flour mixture. Mix well and turn out onto a generously floured board. Knead lightly for a couple of turns. Pat out to a round about 1 inch in thickness.
- Using a sharp 3 inch cutter, stamp out rounds and place them well spaced apart on the baking sheets. Re pat and cut the scraps until you have used all the dough, again placing them well spaced on the baking sheets.
- Leave to rise for about 10 minutes.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minute to 20 minutes until golden brown on tops and bottoms and well risen. Lift off to cool on a wire cooling rack.
- Delicious served warm with cold butter and honey or jam.
Did you make this recipe?
This content (written and photography) is the sole property of The English Kitchen. Any reposting or misuse is not permitted. If you are reading this elsewhere, please know that it is stolen content and you may report it to me at: mariealicejoan at aol dot com
Usually at the weekend I like to bake us something that we can enjoy for breakfast or with a hot drink. I do bake sweet things too.
I am not sure why I always bake at the weekend. I suppose it is a habit that started when I was working full time. I did not really have much time during the week to bake us anything special. We were lucky I managed to get dinner done!
The recipe I am sharing with you today for Sugar-Free Banana Nut Muffins has been adapted from a cookbook of mine entitled Bread for Breakfast by Beth Hensperger.
It is filled with lots of baked Breakfast options, including muffins, loaves (both sweet and savoury, quick and yeasted), Scones, Biscuits, cornbreads, etc.
There are also a sections on coffee cakes and holiday bakes, pancakes and waffles, as well as butters, jams and fruit and cheese spreads.
Bananas are quite sweet fruit and the longer you allow them to ripen the sweeter they get. The best bananas for baking are ones which are heavily speckled with brown, maybe even to the point where you think they are past it.
But they are not past it. They are perfect and sweet and ready to be baked into muffins and loaves, cookies, cakes, etc.
These are lovely and moist. There is buttermilk in the batter. I love bakes with buttermilk. Buttermilk adds a special lightness and tenderness to bakes such as this.
It is an acid as well, so it helps to create a nice lift. You always need to add bicarbonate of soda to a bake using something acidic like buttermilk, yogurt, sour cream, etc.
When baking soda is combined with the lactic acids of buttermilk, the acid neutralizes the metallic taste of sodium carbonate, and the batter will bubble and expand.
This is why when you are baking something with buttermilk and soda in it you need to get your bake into the oven as quickly as possible. This is to help take advantage of that chemical reaction.
The heat of the oven will immediately increase the effects of that action giving you a nice tall and light bake. If you wait too long to put your bakes into the oven you will risk losing that effect, and in fact you will decrease the action of the buttermilk and the soda as well.
So speed is the key factor here. Make sure you have your pan greased and everything ready to go as soon as you mix the wet and dry ingredients together!
So, no sugar. These muffins have no sugar whatsoever. I didn't mind. The end result was not sweet at all actually. It was just right. Just what I would expect a true muffin to taste like.
If you want sweet, you will have to add a bit of sugar into the mix. I wouldn't think you would need a lot actually, maybe only 1 or 2 TBS of either caster sugar or soft light brown sugar.
We enjoyed them just as they were, served warm with some butter for spreading on top. Look at the texture of these beauties. I call that perfection.
The recipe only makes 9 muffins. That's another thing I liked about the recipe. Nine muffins is a perfectly reasonable amount. They also freeze really well according to the recipe. Up to three months in an airtight container.
Baking things like this at the weekend means I also get to use my roll cover. My good friend Monique sent this sweet embroidered roll cover to me last year, or possibly even the year before, for my Birthday.
Every time I use it I cannot help but think of her, and her many kindnesses to me through the years. Meeting good and kind people is one of the blessings you gain from being a member of the blogging community.
Like is attracted to like. These sweet friendships are one of the things I love most about blogging. That sense of community. Oh sure there is the odd nasty person, or troll as they are called, but the good ones far outweigh them.
There are some pecans in these muffins. Chopped pecans. I always like to toast my nuts before baking with them. It doesn't take much of an effort. It only takes a few minutes on a dry baking sheet in a hot oven.
They are done when they start to smell all nice and nutty. Do watch them however, as they can go from toasty to burnt in milliseconds. Five to eight minutes at 200*C/400*F will do the trick.
You could add chocolate chips. Just saying. I like semi-sweet chocolate chips or milk chocolate chips. Both are quite nice in banana muffins. You could even add some berries. Blueberries would be nice.
Sugar-Free Banana Nut Muffins
Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 cups (210g) plain flour
- 1/2 cup (70g)whole wheat flour
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/2 cup (60g) chopped toasted pecan nuts
- 1 cup (240ml) buttermilk
- 2 large free range eggs
- 120ml (1/2 cup) canola oil
- 2 medium sized ripe bananas
- 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
Instructions:
- Preheat the oven to 190*C/375*F/ gas mark 5. Butter a muffin tin really well, or spray with non-stick cooking spray.
- Sift together the flour, baking powder, soda and cinnamon. Stir in the salt. Stir in the toasted pecans.
- Beat the oil, eggs, buttermilk and vanilla together with a wire wisk to combine well. Stir in the mashed banana. Pour this mixture into the dry ingrdients and fold everything together with a plastic spatula just to combine.
- Immediately spoon into the prepared muffin tin, filling each hole to the rim.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes. The muffins should be well risen and a toothpick inserted in the centre of one should come out clean.
- Let cool in the pan for about 5 minutes before tipping out onto a wire rack to cool.
notes:
Did you make this recipe?
This content (written and photography) is the sole property of The English Kitchen. Any reposting or misuse is not permitted. If you are reading this elsewhere, please know that it is stolen content and you may report it to me at: mariealicejoan at aol dot com
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I am of the strongest opinion that one can never have such a thing as too many biscuit recipes, and by biscuit I am talking North American Biscuits, not English Biscuits, which are cookies and something completely different.
Cheddar, Bacon & Chive Biscuits are fabulously tasty, light, flakey, peppery, stogged with rich strong cheddar and are beautiful served along side of savoury things like soups, stews, salads, etc.
I will go out on a limb here and tell you they are also kinda nice spread with butter and honey, only because I have done that and they were delicious, but then again, taste is a very individual thing is it not?
I had this huge discussion on my English Kitchen Facebook stage the other day with someone who was quite irate that in an English Kitchen I would be calling Scones Biscuits. I was calling what I had made Biscuits (The Yogurt ones) because they were Biscuits, NOT Scones!
I, personally, know the difference between a Biscuit and a Scone. I am well versed in the differences between the two. I am a trained Chef good golly cheese whiz. I have had experience living and cooking on both sides of the pond.
Today I will endeavour to enlighten you with what those differences are. What you do with this knowledge is up to you. 😊 I know, I am preaching to the choir here, but there may be some who don't know and this is for them.
Biscuits for the most part contain no sugar, although you will find the rare recipe which will include at least some. My mother-in-laws recipe has a TBS of sugar in it.
Generally speaking a scone recipe will have some sugar in it, maybe even copious amounts.
Biscuits are usually brushed with butter or milk. Scones usually have an egg wash. Scones, generally speaking, will also have he addition of eggs in the liquid used. (Not always however.) Are you confused yet?
Cheddar, Bacon & Chive Biscuits
Ingredients:
- 2 cups (280g) plain flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp coarse black pepper
- 1 tsp garlic powder (NOT garlic salt)
- 3 slices of crisp cooked bacon, crumbled into bits
- 60g sharp cheddar cheese grated
- 1 TBS finely chopped chives.
- 3 ounces (85g) frozen butter (6 TBS)
- 7 fluid ounces (190ml)of buttermilk
Instructions:
- Preheat the oven to 225*C/425*F/gas mark 7. Line a baking tray with some baking paper and set aside.
- Sift the flour, baking powder and baking soda into a bowl. Stir in the cheese, chopped chives, bacon, pepper, garlic powder, and salt.
- Using the largest holes on a box grater, quickly grate the butter over top and mix in using a round bladed knife. Stir all together. Add the buttermilk and mix together. The dough will be somewhat sticky. Don't worry about that.
- Tip the dough out onto a floured board and knead lightly 3 or 4 times to bring it together. Pat out to a 1 1/2 inch thick round.
- Using a 2 1/2 to 3- inch sharp round cutter, stamp out rounds, using a straight up and down motion. Do not twist the cutter.
- Place spaced apart on the baking sheet.
- Bake for about 15 minutes until risen and golden brown. Serve warm with plenty of butter for spreading. Delicious!
Did you make this recipe?
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