Cathead Biscuits. The recipe for these extra-large biscuits comes from Virginia Willis, the author of " Secrets of the Southern Table." A phrase her grandfather once used, the name indicates that it's a biscuit as big as a cat's head. Each one is golden brown and slightly crisp on the outside, with a light, airy interior. No butter or cake flour. too smooth and not craggy.
You can cook Cathead Biscuits using 8 ingredients and 11 steps. Here is how you achieve it.
Ingredients of Cathead Biscuits
- Prepare 1 1/2 cups of AP flour.
- You need 1 1/2 cup of cake flour.
- It’s 1 tbs of baking powder.
- You need 1/2 tsp of baking soda.
- It’s 2 tsp of salt.
- Prepare 3/4 cup of unsalted butter stick cut into cubes.
- It’s 1 1/4 cup of buttermilk.
- It’s 1/2 cup of melted butter.
For each biscuit, pinch off a piece of dough about the size of a large egg or a small lemon and pat out in the ungreased pan with your hands. The only reasonable conclusion in this biscuit saga is that a cathead biscuit must be defined by its size. If the biscuit is the size of a cat's head (no joke, that's where the name came from — mystery solved), it's a cathead biscuit. No one likes a biscuit that is still doughy, but neither does anyone like a hard crust either!
Cathead Biscuits instructions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees and spray a round cake pan. If doubling the recipe, use a 9x11. For this recipe I used a 9x11..
In a mixing bowl, whisk the AP flour, cake flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together..
Scatter the butter cubes throughout the flour mixture..
Using a pastry cutter or two knives, cut the butter in the flour mixture until it resembles a coarse meal with some chunks of butter..
Make a well and add the buttermilk in the well. Using a fork, gently toss the flour mixture into the buttermilk, scraping the sides of the mixing bowl..
The dough will be sticky so make sure you coat your hands with some flour before doing the next step..
Mix the dough with your hands, but not too much. You do not want the dough to be smooth at all..
Now take chunks of dough and place inside the baking pan just as you see in the picture above..
Brush each piece of biscuit dough with melter butter and bake about 20 minutes or until top is brown..
The edges will have a little crunch that adds some good flavor..
Very thick and moist biscuit and it is good with some honey, preserves, butter, bacon, sausage, eggs or just plain..
You can brush melted butter on the tops of the biscuits when they are done, or before you place them in the oven. Baking these Fluffy Southern Cat Head Biscuits in a deep skillet serves two purposes. Second, the biscuits edges on the outside of the pan turn crispy, while the center edges are soft and feathery. Cat Head Biscuits are so named because they are as big as a cat's head. This is another one of my favorite recipes from America's Test Kitchen.
