Cream Cheese Biscuits

March 31, 2024

Savory biscuits are great. Super versatile. “Sweet” biscuits typically fall into the scone or shortbread category and are of course fabulous.

These cream cheese biscuits are in a class of their own. They are subtly sweet, but still 100% biscuit. They have flaky layers of chewy biscuitness with tender cream cheese layers in between. They are great for strawberry short cake and for topping a fruit cobbler with, but they are also perfect with a cup of afternoon tea.

Let’s get started…

Begin by whisking 1 cup of cake flour with 1 cup of all purpose flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder and 2 tablespoons of granulated sugar in a large bowl.

Now add 1/2 cup of cold butter. If you are a seasoned biscuit maker, go ahead and add your butter cubed, but if you are not confident in “cutting” the butter into the flour, I highly recommend shredding your butter.

Shredding cold butter in a large cheese grater and then chilling it in the freezer for a few minutes is one of the easiest ways to incorporate cold butter into biscuit or scone dough.

Use a stiff fork or pastry cutter to work the cold butter into the flour mixture until the butter is evenly distributed throughout the flour and broken down to pea sized pieces. Be quick enough that the butter doesn’t start to soften. This should take just a few seconds.

This is the texture you are looking for. You should still see butter everywhere in this mixture, just not big clumps.

Add 3/4 cup of cold whole fat buttermilk into the bowl and use a fork to mix until a shaggy dough begins to form.

Transfer the dough onto a flour surface and knead very lightly to bring everything together.

Biscuit dough should be handled as little as possible in order to maintain its tenderness. When I “knead” biscuit dough, I use my finger tips, fold it a little and pat the sides to bring them together. You just want everything to look mostly incorporated, not smooth like a bread dough would be.

Form the dough into a rectangle and use a sharp knife or dough cutter to cut the rectangle into 4 equal pieces. Place a thin slice of cream cheese on 3 of the 4 pieces…

…then stack the cream cheese topped pieces on top of each other and add the fourth piece on top of them and press everything down and back into a rectangle. This will help to not only evenly incorporate the cream cheese, but will also create beautiful layers in your biscuits.

Once your rectangle is about an inch thick, use a sharp knife to cut the rectangle into squares or a biscuit cutter to cut out circles. I used a 2 inch biscuit cutter and got 8 biscuits out of this dough (I reformed the scraps to create my last 2 biscuits).

Once the biscuits are cut into your desired size and shape, transfer them onto a nonstick or parchment lined baking sheet leaving some space in between each one and chill them in your freezer while you preheat your oven to 425 degrees.

Before you start baking your biscuits, brush the top of them with buttermilk and I love sprinkling some coarse sugar over their tops (any sugar will do!) to create a crunchy, crackly top.

Bake in a 425 degree oven for about 18 minutes. If you pull these biscuits out when they are lightly golden, they will be tender in the middle, but if you prefer a little more chewiness, leave them in until they are a little more golden.

These biscuits are special. A subtly sweet exterior with flaky layers and wonderful flavor.

I recommend adding some butter while they are still hot, so it melts into all those beautiful layers. These biscuits are great on their own, fabulous with some fruit jelly and absolute perfection with some warm fruit compote ladled over top of them.

If you are looking for a great biscuit recipe for breakfast, brunch, dessert or afternoon snack then I would love t=for you to give these cream cheese biscuits a try.

Print Recipe