Jalapeño Cheddar Biscuits

Thanks to the combination of cheddar and jalapeno in a sharp cheddar cheese form, our Easy Jalapeno Cheddar Biscuits come together in just 30 minutes with only five ingredients. You are welcome.

Jalapeno Cheddar Biscuits

Biscuits are to me, what liquor is to a fresh 21-year-old –I know no limits, eat entirely too many and end up with a nasty biscuit-induced hangover afterwards.

I can’t help it. The buttery, flaky bites of heaven get me every.single.time. Given the difficult decision between a biscuit and a buttery roll, nine times out of ten, I’ll choose the biscuit. Simply irresistible.

My biscuit love affair began as a child when I tried frozen biscuits at a friend’s house for the first time – they were single-handedly one of the most delicious foods I’d ever tasted. They weren’t anything fancy or homemade – they were frozen after all – but they were everything a perfect biscuit should be – light as air, flaky, buttery and completely addictive all at the same time. Every day after school, we’d go to her house, giddily pull out the biscuits from the freezer, bake way too many and then smother them with spreadable butter for the perfect after school snack.

Since then I’ve consumed and baked biscuits of all varieties from buttermilk, fluffy, stuffed, crispy, dense. And I’ve come to the conclusion that there is just no such thing as a bad biscuit. There’s just not.

Let’s get started!

Ingredients in Jalapeno Cheddar Biscuits.

Fat. Hands down my favorite combination for a biscuit is an even proportion of butter (for flavor) to shortening (for lightness) and heavy cream (for obvious reasons) as the liquid. While of course, not the most waist-friendly, for me, this yields the absolute perfect biscuit.

If you stopped here and read the recipe, you’d immediately call me a hypocrite because this recipe calls for neither shortening nor heavy cream, BUT hear me out before you call my bluff. In this particular recipe, I wanted to make biscuit making as approachable and simple as possible by using as few ingredients as possible. Butter is the secret flavor weapon in all biscuits, so obviously that was something I couldn’t leave out. And in the spirit of simplicity, it’s our only fat.

Liquid. Whole milk instead of cream lightens the biscuits up just a touch (fat-wise).

Cheese. As aforementioned, shredded jalapeno cheddar cheese is a double whammy ingredient including both the sharp nutty cheddar we look for and a spicy addition of jalapenos.

Baking powder. When you don’t use an acid you can simply use baking powder without the addition of baking soda.

How to make Jalapeno Cheddar Biscuits

Grate the butter and cheese. Before you begin, grate the butter on to a plate. Pop in the freezer while you shred the cheese and prep the dry ingredients.

Whisk the dry ingredients. Whisk flour, salt and baking powder together.

Stir in the wet ingredients. Add the shredded cheese to the flour mixture. Stir to combine. Add the frozen butter. Stir to combine. Drizzle the milk over the top of the dry ingredients, stir to combine.

Form the dough. We want to work quickly. Stir the mixture until everything is almost combined and dump it out onto a lightly floured surface. Gently knead the dough once or twice until it comes together and then gently pat it into a 1/2 inch thickness. These particular biscuits were miniature (for a recipe coming up!), so I use a 1/4 cup measure to cut the biscuits, but you can make them whatever size you want. For me, this made about 15 one-inch biscuits.

Bake. Next up, brush with a little bit more whole milk. Sprinkle with extra jalapeno cheddar cheese and pop into a 425 degree oven until they’re golden brown, risen and perfume your entire house.

Now THOSE are some biscuits, if I do say so myself… They’re perfect straight out of the oven slathered with butter, but stayed tuned to see what I do with them!