Blueberry Cream Cheese Biscuits

Biscuits
2 ¾ C (13 ¾ oz/390 g) all-purpose flour
1 T (12 g) baking powder
1 t (4 g) baking soda
1 t (4 g) granulated sugar
½ t (3 g) salt
4 oz (113 g) cold cream cheese
½ C cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 ¼ C (296 ml) cold buttermilk
1 ½ C (7 ½ oz/213 g) fresh or frozen blueberries

Vanilla Butter
6 T (85 g) unsalted butter, softened
1 t (5 ml) vanilla bean paste
¼ t salt

Lemon Glaze
2 C (8 oz/227 g) powdered sugar
1/3 C (78 ml) fresh lemon juice
2 T lemon zest

Position rack in middle of oven and heat to 425° F (218° C). Line cookie sheet with parchment paper or silicon pad. Set aside.

Biscuits – In bowl of food processor, add flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, and salt. Pulse 2 to 3 one second pulses to combine dry ingredients. Add cream cheese and butter to food processor and pulse an additional 12 to 15 one second pulses until coarse crumbs form. Empty food processor bowl ingredients into large mixing bowl. Make well in center and pour in buttermilk. Stir with large spoon or spatula until just combined. Fold in blueberries. Use hands if needed to bring dough together in a ball.

Pat dough into disc that is 1 ½-inches thick. This will make tall biscuits. Using a 2 ½ or 3-inch biscuit cutter, cut dough into rounds and place on prepared pan. Dip biscuit cutter in flour after each cut to reduce dough from sticking. Bring extra dough together and cut more biscuits, using all of dough.

Bake for 12 to 15 minutes or until biscuits are golden and tall. Depending on preference, prepare vanilla butter or lemon glaze. Serve on warm biscuits.

Vanilla butter – In medium bowl, mix softened butter, vanilla bean paste, and salt until combined and smooth.

Lemon glaze – In medium bowl, whisk together, powdered sugar, lemon juice and zest until combined and smooth.

Makes: 9 to 12 biscuits

18 Mar 18 – As I assembled my ingredients, I chilled butter, cream cheese and blueberries in freeze to ensure they were cold. My blueberries were only so-so (small, some old looking etc) causing me to only pick out and wash as many as I needed. I deviated from the recipes instructions for cutting in the butter and cream cheese. Rather than use a pastry cutter, I used my food processor as I indicated in the recipe above. I hestitated using the FP for mixing in the buttermilk and moved the dry ingredients to a large bowl where I mixed in the buttermilk. The next time and might try using the FP for the buttermilk as well. I used my large silpat pad lightly floured to finish combining the dough and patting it out into a circle. I used a 3-inch pastry cutter to cut out biscuits which produced 9 large biscuits. Next time I would probably use a 2 ½-inch cutter. Dipping cutter in flour after each cut helped a lot. Also, the next time I make this recipe, I would use twice as many blueberries, as shown in recipe above, than what was called for in original recipe. Baked in island oven for 15 mins. Biscuit tops had not started turning golden at 13 mins so I returned them to oven for an addition 2 minutes. Biscuits rose nicely and were a litte cruchy on the outside and flakey and tender on the inside. Good biscuit texture and taste. Not sweet. Butter glaze came together quickly and easily as descibe in recipe above. The next time I might make a lemon/powdered sugar glaze to sweeten things up.