Bride's Biscuits (Angel Biscuits) Recipe (2025)

FAQs

What's the difference between angel biscuits and regular biscuits? ›

“Angel biscuits” and “magic biscuits” are two old-fashioned, slightly hyperbolic names for buttermilk biscuits that contain both baker's yeast and chemical leaveners (i.e., baking powder and baking soda). Typically, baked goods contain either yeast or chemical leaveners but not both.

Mistake #1: Baking powder and baking soda are OLD.

A chemical leavening agent will form carbon dioxide bubbles making your biscuits rise. But your leavening agents can expire over time meaning they won't react like they should in your recipe, so your biscuits won't rise well.

Use Cold Butter for Biscuits

For flaky layers, use cold butter. When you cut in the butter, you have coarse crumbs of butter coated with flour. As the biscuits bake, the butter melts, releasing steam and creating pockets of air. This makes the biscuits airy and flaky on the inside.

Crisco may be beneficial for other baking applications, but for biscuit making, butter is the ultimate champion!

Buttermilk also adds a subtle tang. Cream biscuits are made with heavy cream. Cream biscuits are beloved because they're incredibly easy-to-make. But, since cream is much milder than buttermilk, they won't be quite as flavorful (unless you incorporate more spices and seasonings).

Keep the oven hot.

When baking buttery treats like biscuits, the key is to bake them at a temperature where the water in the butter turns quickly to steam. This steam is a big part of how the biscuits achieve their height, as it evaporates up and out.

And the longer it takes the butter to melt as the biscuits bake, the more chance they have to rise high and maintain their shape. So, chill... and chill.

Which liquid makes the best biscuits? ›

Just as important as the fat is the liquid used to make your biscuits. Our Buttermilk Biscuit recipe offers the choice of using milk or buttermilk. Buttermilk is known for making biscuits tender and adding a zippy tang, so we used that for this test.

Buttermilk adds a tangy flavor to the biscuits and makes them slightly more tender. No food processor: Add the dry ingredients to a large bowl, and use your hands or a pastry cutter to cut the butter into the flour until crumbly.

While over-handling your biscuit dough can make your baked goods turn out like hockey pucks, under-mixing it while you're still adding all of your ingredients can result in floury or grainy biscuits.

If your taste is like mine, then (for 8 biscuits), use: 2 cups of flour. 1 cup of liquid (milk, buttermilk, or water) 1/2 cup of fat (butter, stick margarine, or shortening)

Make sure your shortening is cold! This recipe uses Crisco shortening, and I recommend freezing it before adding it to the dough. When the cold shortening hits the heat of the oven, it melts, creating those beautiful flaky layers that we love in a good biscuit.

BISCUITS are broadly classified as being of hard dough or soft dough origin. The hard dough group are savoury, unsweetened, or semisweet, and include all types of crackers, puff dough biscuits, and the semi-sweet varieties such as Marie, Rich Tea, and Petit Beurre.

There are many theories about why Southern biscuits are different (ahem, better) than other biscuits—richer buttermilk, more butter, better grandmothers—but the real difference is more fundamental. Southern biscuits are different because of the flour most Southerners use. My grandmother swore by White Lily flour.

A digestive and a hobnob are quite similar, but the hobnob uses rolled oats and white self-raising flour, while the digestive calls for wholemeal flour and baking powder. Digestives were developed in the 1830's by two Scottish doctors in the aim to create a biscuit that could aid digestion, hence the name 'Digestive'.