Top 'O The Morning

How to tell if your symbol of luck isn't real.  Image and info from this website.

Clover, schmover.
If you're really lucky, you'll find a pot of these golden biscuits at the end of your breakfast table.

They are genuinely ridiculous.

Drunken Honey Biscuits

by Sharon Graves

Prep Time: 20 minutes, plus fridge time

Cook Time: 15 minutes

Sweet, sticky, buttery biscuit treats. Thanks to the cake flour and the proportions of wet to dry ingredients, these are more tender and moist than traditional buttermilk biscuits even before they are soaked and coated with a rich honey glaze.  In a nod to St. Pat's Day, I added a splash of hard cider to the glaze and did not regret it. Talk about finger licking good! Barely adapted from this recipe on Food52.

6071475

Ingredients

For the biscuits

• 2 1/4 c. cake flour
• 1 Tbs. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. kosher salt
• 1/2 c. (1 stick) butter, cold
• 3/4 c. buttermilk
• 1/4 c. honey

For the drunken honey glaze

• 1/2 c. honey
• 1/4 c. hard apple cider, optional - if you don't use, increase honey to 2/3 cup, and decrease brown sugar to 1/4 c.
• 1/3 c. brown sugar
• 2 Tbs. melted butter
• pinch of kosher salt*
• 1/4 tsp. almond extract, optional

For assembly

• Additional cake flour, for rolling out the biscuits
• Butter to prepare the baking pan
• Additional honey

Instructions

Start by making the biscuits. Whisk flour, baking powder and salt together in a medium bowl. Slice butter into thin pats, and add to the flour mixture. Use a pastry cutter or two forks to cut the butter in until things look crumbly, with pea sized pieces of butter completely coated in flour.

Add buttermilk and honey, and stir gently with a wooden spoon or spatula just until flour is completely absorbed. The dough will be much wetter and stickier than a normal biscuit dough. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes to an hour.

While the dough is chilling, prepare the glaze. Combine all ingredients in a small bowl and stir until smooth. It'll resemble a loose, opaque caramel.  Cover loosely until the biscuits are done.

Preheat oven to 425. Generously butter a 9 or 10 inch square or round baking pan, or a cookie sheet. Set aside.

Remove dough from the fridge. Spread a good amount of cake flour onto a work surface and turn the dough out onto the flour. Working gently, turn and fold the dough in the flour just a few times, until the surface is no longer sticky. Roll out to a thickness of about half an inch, and cut rounds with a 2 1/2 inch biscuit cutter, re-rolling scraps as you go.  You should get about nine biscuits all together.

Transfer biscuits to prepared pan and bake until golden brown all over, about 15-17 minutes.

Remove from the oven. Using the back end of a spoon, poke a hole in the center of each biscuit, and squeeze a dollop of honey in there. It will dissolve into the hot biscuit as it cools. 

Stir the reserved glaze, and then brush generously all over the hot biscuits, giving them several coats. Doing this while they're hot gives the biscuits a gorgeous, shiny finish.

Cool for 5-10 minutes, then serve warm.

If these aren't decadent enough for your celebration, by all means go for the Chocolate Stout Cake with Bailey's Cream Cheese Frosting, or Irish Soda Bread with Extra Sugar and Drunken Raisins.  Or just have beer for breakfast and be done.

* I had to pinch the salt.  My kids are too grown up for me to pinch them.