Two-Ingredient Cast Iron Biscuits
There are some recipes that make you wonder why you ever bothered doing things the complicated way. These biscuits are one of them.
No cutting cold butter into flour. No folding the dough six times. No long ingredient list. Just self-rising flour and heavy cream, baked in a buttered cast iron skillet until they're tall, tender, and golden brown.
The heavy cream does all the work here. It brings the fat and moisture you would normally get from adding butter and milk separately, while self-rising flour already has the leavening built in. The result is a surprisingly good Southern-style biscuit with barely any effort.
And yes, I still butter the skillet. Two ingredients doesn't mean we have to deprive ourselves.
Two-Ingredient Biscuits
Makes: about 8 biscuits
Oven: 425°F
Ingredients
2 cups self-rising flour
1½ cups heavy cream
1 teaspoon baking powder, optional, for a little extra height
Butter, for greasing the skillet
Directions
Preheat your oven to 425°F and generously butter a cast iron skillet.
Add the self-rising flour to a large bowl. If you want taller, fluffier biscuits, whisk in a teaspoon of baking powder.
Pour in the heavy cream and gently mix until the dough just comes together. Don't overwork it—you want to stop as soon as there aren't any big pockets of dry flour left.
Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and gently pat it out. Cut the biscuits with a biscuit cutter and place them in the buttered cast iron skillet. They can sit fairly close together; that actually helps encourage them to rise upward rather than spread.
Bake at 425°F until the tops are golden brown and the biscuits are cooked through. Serve them hot, preferably with another swipe of butter while they're still warm.
A Few Biscuit Rules
The biggest thing is don't overwork the dough. The less you mess with it, the more tender the biscuits will be.
When cutting them, press the biscuit cutter straight down rather than twisting it. Twisting can seal the edges and keep those beautiful layers from rising as well.
And while you can bake these on a regular baking sheet, I love them in cast iron. The butter melts underneath the biscuits as they bake, giving the bottoms a little extra richness and color.
Two ingredients, one skillet, and a batch of homemade biscuits on the table. That's about as easy as baking gets.
