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.

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!