Burnt Honey Butter Biscuits

I hope everyone had a lovely, Small Thanksgiving! I hope you got to spend it with some family in friends in person, or over video chat! I hope you ate too much food.

I definitely did eat too much, and yet this week I’m still eating some mac and cheese and finally having some pumpkin pie. And, of course, I’m starting to think about Christmas foods. ‘Tis the season!

Actually, it’s been the season since I let myself start watching Christmas Rom Coms on Halloween. I’ve relaxed all the rules this year.

One rule I won’t relax, however, is my personal rule that you cannot have too many carbs on a holiday table. So, today I offer an option, we’re making biscuits! Burnt Honey Butter biscuits, to be exact.

No, the “burnt” does not refer to the biscuits, but rather the honey in the butter in the biscuits. Yeah. It adds an extra step to these, but I promise, it is worth it! The burnt honey takes on a complex, bitter note under the sweetness, and that combines into a biscuit that is still perfect as a vehicle for more butter or gravy, but also has an edge to it that goes fantastically with sweet jams or fruit butters, or even savory applications like whole grain mustard. They are pretty addictive.

I came up with these on a whim earlier this year. The thing about a pandemic is you have extra time to sit and comb through your more neglected cookbooks. One of those for me was Christina Tosi’s Milk Bar Life, which I bought years ago but had never cooked out of. It was fun to read, but I don’t exactly want to make something like Tang Toast or fruity pebble meringues (or do I). However, picking it up again this year, I realized there is a treasure trove of recipes in there for hearty, comforting meals and fun snacks, exactly what I was after. I successfully made a pizza, failed at kimchi cheese-its, and after making a batch of burnt honey butter for a recipe that used 1 tablespoon of it, I was left with basically an entire stick’s worth of butter. I decided to find out how it would do in biscuits.

It does great! But a couple subsequent experiments taught me a few dangers to watch out for. DON’T over burn the honey, DO keep everything as COLD as possible when working with a whipped butter, and DO weigh everything. Also, no, these won’t do very well swapping in whole wheat flour.

If you manage that, I promise some flaky, fluffy, buttery biscuits, with a faint bitter note. These are cozy with an edge, perfect for slicing through an indulgent Christmas or New Year’s dinner and bringing you into 2021.

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Burnt Honey Butter Biscuits

These have a few steps, but the key is to not over cook the honey and make sure the biscuit dough goes into the oven as cold as possible, so your whipped honey butter doesn’t leak out and burn.

For the biscuits:

• 100 g burnt honey butter, chilled (recipe below)

• 300 g all purpose flour

• 1/2 tsp kosher salt

• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder

• 200 g buttermilk, plus more for brushing

• Sesame seeds, for garnish (optional)

Burnt Honey Butter (adapted from Christina Tosi)

• 1/4 cup honey

• 1 stick unsalted butter, cut into chunks

• 1/2 tsp kosher salt

1. Make the honey butter: clip a candy thermometer into a medium pot (a fairly deep one, this honey will at least triple in volume while cooking). Heat the honey over medium-high heat until it turns a dark amber color and/or reaches 325 degrees. I found that with 1/4 cup of honey, getting an accurate measurement of the temperature was tricky, so use the 325 as an upper ceiling, but use your eyes and nose. If the honey starts to smoke or smell burnt instead of nutty/caramelized, take it off immediately. Ideally, you don’t want to get it that dark, it will just taste acrid instead of bitter. For me, the sweet spot was about 7-8 minutes.

2. Remove honey from heat and immediately add the butter pieces and salt, and whisk to combine. Keep whisking to melt any pieces that seized, until you have a smooth mixture. Transfer to a bowl and chill, covered, until solid.

3. Once solid, whip on medium-high speed in a mixer until light in color. It’s ok if there are a few shards of solid honey but remove any big ones. These will just leak out of your biscuits and burn (trust me). Return the whipped butter to the fridge to chill until needed.

4. Make the biscuits: In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder, then rub the chilled butter into the flour, flattening the pieces until you have a coarse mixture with “flakes” of butter no smaller than peas, but you want some shaggy, big pieces too. Add in the buttermilk and mix to combine, just until it comes together. It’s ok if looks shaggy and there are still some dry bits at this point.

5. Turn the dough out on to a lightly floured counter and press and knead the dough and any dry pieces into a round. Roll the dough out until about 1/2 inch thick, and use a 2 1/4-inch cutter to punch out 8 biscuits. To get the last 1 or 2 biscuits, gather the remaining scraps and mold pieces together in the biscuit cutter to create a 1/2 inch thick round, handling as little as necessary.

6. Place biscuits on a parchment lined baking sheet, brush with a bit of buttermilk, sprinkle with sesame seeds, if using. Transfer to the fridge to chill for at least 30 minutes, while you preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

7. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until dark golden and tall. Serve immediately or at room temp with more butter, apple butter, or another sweet jam, or even mustard!

Thanksgiving Leftovers Mashed Potato Soup with Stuffing Croutons

We made it to the Friday before Thanksgiving! Is that something to celebrate? I think so, as it can also be read as “we made it this far through this hellish year.” That’s reason enough to applaud ourselves. And yes, the hellish time is not over, but I can look past the muted holidays and the clumsy coup attempts and see two effective vaccines silhouetted in the light at the end of the tunnel. I still don’t know yet how far away the end of the tunnel is, but I can start to see it. That’s something to be thankful for this year.

Last year, on the Friday before Thanksgiving, I happy-danced off a plane at Heathrow with Claire and Ryan, to a weekend in London ahead of our week in Dubai. I was looking through pictures yesterday, and it was painful to see how oblivious we were to a threat that we now know was already circulating through Europe. How casually we mingled, sans masks, with packed crowds in holiday bar pop ups, inside restaurants(!) and on the Tube. But we also looked like we were just letting ourselves have fun, a concept foreign to most of this year. The Dubai pictures show the same. So, I’m mostly just thankful now that we took that trip in 2019, so I have somewhat fresh memories to get me through the separations and pure anxiety of this year, and to look forward to traveling with family and friends again one day.

That is my thankful list this year, and I’d also add on that I’m thankful no one I know has been truly impacted by Covid, beyond one friend’s mild case and my own three-month stint on the unemployment rolls. And, of course, the general way we’ve all been impacted. I know I’m lucky, my friends are lucky, my family is lucky, and all we can do is hope we stay lucky.

So in 2020, the Friday before Thanksgiving, I’m not walking off a plane in London, but I’m trying for optimism, trying not to panic about the riskiness of my small gathering plans, and trying to make it one more month to December. We can do it.

Before December, though, we need to get through the immediate aftermath of Thanksgiving. Whatever form it will take for you, a holiday is still a holiday. Even if you only manage to muster a level of excitement usually reserved for, say, President’s Day, a holiday is still a holiday, and a day off work is still a day off work. There will inevitably be a little depression heading into the Monday after, when we are somehow expected again to work all five days in a week. Capitalism really is a monster.

May I suggest we all take comfort in our leftovers? There should probably be some pie. Good, breakfast is covered. Then of course you have The Sandwich, where I hope you don’t discriminate and pile a bit from every container of leftovers between two good slices of bread. Please toast that bread in a pan with olive oil and sea salt first.

But should you want to really go for comfort, let me introduce you to The Soup. This is where you take a bit from all your savory leftovers and any ingredient odds and ends you have left, and combine everything into a flavorful, seasonal bowl of cozy. It would be a good idea to have some leftover potatoes on hand. Here, I use mashed, but I see no reason why scalloped or gratinéed potatoes can’t work, just pull out the blender. Add whatever veggies you’ve got, any leftover turkey or whatever other roasted protein (beef, chicken, ham, tofu, it all works here) and chop everything into small pieces. Then, reserve your leftover stuffing to the side and toast it into croutons in the oven. Get everything in the soup pot with as much broth or water you need, bring it to a simmer, blend as needed. Taste and adjust your seasonings. Ladle into bowls, garnish with your stuffing croutons. Drizzle with a swirl of gravy, top with some cranberry if you have it, and sprinkle any fresh herbs you have left.

Thank me on Monday, when you can have the last of this for lunch.

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Mashed Potato Soup with Stuffing Croutons

This version pulls in ingredients from this year’s Small Thanksgiving menu, but you can of course freestyle this with whatever you have on hand with whatever amounts you wish. I’ve just provided some amounts below, as loose guidelines.

For the soup:

• olive oil

• 2 cups celery, chopped

• 2 cups carrots, chopped

• 2 cloves garlic

• fresh herbs (thyme, rosemary, etc)

• salt and pepper, to taste

• 3-4 cups leftover mashed potatoes and cauliflower

• 2 cups broth (chicken, turkey, vegetable, or water)

• 1-2 cups leftover stuffing

• leftover gravy

1. Heat oven to 300 degrees. In a large pot, heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat, then add the celery and carrots and cook five minutes, until softened. Season with salt and pepper. Add the garlic, and whole sprigs of thyme and rosemary or whatever herbs you are using, and cook another 1-2 minutes, until the garlic is fragrant.

2. Add in the broth, then the mashed potatoes. Stir everything around to break up the potatoes, and add more liquid if it seems too thick.

3. Simmer for 5 minutes. While soup is simmering, toast the stuffing in the oven until heated through and crispy. Warm any gravy in the microwave.

4. Remove the herbs and ladle the soup into bowls, garnish with the stuffing croutons, and drizzle with gravy. Enjoy while hot!

Notes:

• Dice up any protein you have leftover and add to the soup: bacon, turkey, sausage, chicken, beef, tofu. Everything and anything could work. Add the meats or proteins in when you add the potatoes.

• If you don’t have mashed potatoes but did make cheesy, gratin, or scalloped potatoes, those can definitely work here too! You probably just want to blend them with the soup base before adding in any chopped leftover veggies or proteins.

• If you have other thanksgiving classics on hand like green bean casserole, roasted squash, or creamed corn, those can work here too, just chop up the green beans or squash into bite size pieces before adding to the soup, in the same step as the potatoes.

Small Thanksgiving: Sweet Potato Donuts with Toasted Vanilla Marshmallow Topping

Where do you fall on the sweet/savory sweet potato divide? You know, do you get excited for the candied yams and sweet potato casserole, or are you angry that someone put dessert on the table before it was time for pie?

You’ll find me happily straddling that divide, because I appreciate that a sweet potato can go either savory or sweet, and I’m happy to embrace this, shall we say, talent, of the otherwise humble tuber. However, I do get a little annoyed when too many marshmallows pop up on something called a casserole, so in my ideal Thanksgiving, any sweet potatoes during the main meal will be savory, and anything with marshmallows will land on the dessert table. Or, in this case, maybe even the breakfast table?

Because, in deciding to take sweet potatoes firmly into dessert territory, I’ve almost overshot and taken them into Black Friday pastry land as well. I’m not mad about it. Once again I turned to Bravetart herself, and made the sweet potato variation of her yeast-raised potato donuts.

I think you should do this too.

These are fantastic! Easy, rustic, pretty much no-fuss for something you are deep frying. Then, if you want to take it to the truly decadent level, a meringue topping gets you there, bruleed of course! It’s sweet potato casserole but portable, easy to eat with one hand. It is not, however, easy to eat just one of these, so plan accordingly. My recipe below will make about 6 of these for your small crowd, but you may want to scale up as needed!

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Sweet Potato Donuts with Toasted Marshmallow Frosting

Makes 6 donuts

For the Donuts (adapted from Stella Parks)

• 1/4 cup milk (whole milk, 2/%, whatever you have)

• 3/4 tsp active dry yeast

• 1 1/4 cup flour (plus more if needed)

• 2 tbs sugar

• 3/4 tsp kosher salt

• 1/4 tsp fresh grated nutmeg

• 1/8 tsp baking soda

• 3/8 cup cooked sweet potato, mashed and room temperature

• 2 tbs butter, melted

• oil, for frying (canola, or whatever you like for frying)

For the meringue:

• 2 egg whites

• 3 oz sugar

• pinch kosher salt

• pinch cream of tartar

• seeds of 1/2 vanilla bean

1. Make the dough: Warm the milk (but not hot!) and add the yeast. Let it sit for 5 minutes, until foamy. In the bowl of a food processor, pulse the flour, sugar, salt, nutmeg, and baking soda until combined. Then add the milk and yeast mixture, the sweet potato, and the butter, and pulse until a smooth dough forms, about 1 minute. If it seems too wet and sticky, add up to another 2 tbs flour.

2. Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise for 75 minutes, or until the dough has puffed a little (it won’t look completely risen at this point) and it doesn’t spring back if you poke it. If poking the dough doesn’t leave a permanent mark, let rise another 15 minutes.

3. Turn the dough out on a floured surface and divide into 6 or 8 equal pieces, depending on how big or small you want these to be. Roll each piece into a ball, then poke a finger in the center of each piece and form into rings, like, well, donuts. They don’t have to look perfect, remember they will be topped with meringue. Place the donuts on a parchment lined baking sheet and cover with plastic, then let rise another 75 minutes, until puffy and light, and about doubled in size.

4. About 10-15 minutes to the end of the rise time, start heating 2 inches of the oil in a large pot. Fry the donuts at 350 degrees, in batches as needed, for about 90 seconds to 2 minutes, turning frequently to get them evenly colored. Because of the sweet potato, these will brown pretty quickly, but just keep the oil at temperature and you shouldn’t burn them.

5. Transfer fried donuts to a paper towel lined baking sheet to drain, then to a wire rack to cool completely.

6. While donuts are cooling, make the meringue: Add all ingredients to the bowl of a stand mixer over simmering water. Whisking constantly, heat the mixture until it reaches 165 degrees (you can use a thermometer, or at minimum, check the temperature with a finger. When it feels too hot to touch, you are done). Transfer the bowl to the mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, then beat on high until glossy and completely cool, about 5 minutes. You can use immediately if your donuts are completely cooled. Otherwise, set aside until ready to use.

7. To “frost” the donuts, pipe or spoon the meringue onto the donuts, as neatly or as messily as you like. To toast the topping, you can use a small butane torch (or a big one if you’ve got it!) to brown the meringue. But for that real, true toasted marshmallow flavor, I like to toast it in the oven. Set the oven to 375, and bake the frosted donuts until the meringue puffs and turns toasty brown on top. This has the bonus effect of warming the donuts too! Enjoy warm or room temperature.