How I Made Cinnamon Biscuits (Or a Stitch In Time Saves Nine)

Some of you are old enough to remember the old Hardees' Cinnamon Raising Biscuits. Do you remember how everyone went nuts collecting the Cinnamon Raisin figurines?

If you don't remember that, please keep it to yourself. I just realized that I dated myself. Terribly.

Well, since I grew up in a family of 6 kids, going "out to eat," for fast food or dine-in, didn't happen all that often. So my mother would make Cinnamon Raisin Biscuits from scratch. And frankly, they tasted much better than Hardees'.

I was feeling nostalgic this morning.

I made a double-batch of biscuit dough:

2 sticks of butter
6 cups flour
2 tsp. salt
6 tsp. baking powder
2 cups milk (may need more if your dough is dry)

I'll explain why I made a double-batch in a minute. That's the "stitch in time" part.

I mixed the butter and the dry ingredients until pea-sized lumps of dough were formed. Then I incorporated the milk.

I did all of this in my Kitchen-Aid, and let it do the work using the dough hook. I let it run for a couple of minutes.

I preheated my oven to 450 degrees, and put my cast-iron skillet in the oven to heat up, as well.

After I had done all of the above, I took half of the dough and rolled it out....

....sprinkled it with cinnamon and brown sugar....

....folded the sides in and rolled it out again...

...sprinkled it again with cinnamon and brown sugar...

...folded the sides in, turned it seam-side down, rolled it out to flatten just a little bit, and cut out the biscuits.

See the ribbons of cinnamon and brown sugar? Ah, yes.

 Then I put the biscuits in the pre-heated cast-iron skillet. The pre-heated skillet will give  a crispy bottom crust...I love hearing the sizzle when the buttery biscuit dough hits the pan.

I heard once that in order for biscuits to rise properly, they have to bake touching each other. I don't know why. I just do it.

I baked this at 450 for about 12 minutes, or until golden on top.

 

As soon as they came out of the oven, I poured a glaze of melted butter and powdered sugar over the top. I love how the hot skillet makes the sugar crystalize and gives a beautiful crispy sheen over the biscuits, and the heat helps them soak up the buttery sugar. Or the sugary butter. Either way, it's win-win.

That's not a bad way to kick off a Saturday morning.

Now for the "stitch in time" part.

I first came across the idea of homemade frozen biscuits here. Pure genius.

I doubled my batch of biscuit dough to make some to freeze. While my Cinnamon Biscuits were in the oven, I rolled out the second batch, cut them out, put them on a cookie sheet lined with waxed paper, and put them in the freezer for about 30 minutes.

After they were frozen, I pulled them out, put them in a freezer-safe bag, and labeled them.

The extra 7-10 minutes it took to roll out a second batch will save me so much time later, and homemade frozen biscuits are literally a fraction of the cost of purchased ones. So we have fresh biscuits today and frozen ones for another, busier day.

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