Cayenne Cheddar Breakfast Biscuits by Ree

There are biscuit sandwiches…and then there are OH MY GOODNESS, BISCUIT SANDWICHES!!!!!

This one happens to be in the latter category.

 

Start with the dry ingredients for the biscuits: flour, powdered milk, and sugar…

 

 

Then cayenne…

 

 

Baking powder, cream of tartar, and kosher salt.

 

 

Stir it all together and set it aside for a sec!

 

 

Cut a stick of super cold butter into little cubes…

 

 

Then throw it into the dry ingredients along with (not shown because I’m an airhead) the same amount of vegetable shortening. (Pssst. You can use all butter if you prefer!)

 

 

Cut the butter into the dry ingredients…

 

 

Then add the grated cheddar (I used the fine side of the grater)…

 

 

And finish cutting it all together.

 

 

Slowly add some buttermilk…

 

 

And stir it gradually until it all comes together. You might stop a little short of adding all the buttermilk if it seems moist enough, or you may want to add an extra splash of buttermilk if it seems too dry. This is a slightly wet biscuit dough; it shouldn’t be overly dry and crumbly.

 

 

Spread a little flour on the countertop…

 

 

And use your fingers to press the dough into a circle about 1 1/2 inches thick. This was a little too thin; don’t be afraid, as I apparently was, to keep the dough on the thick side. That said, I usually prefer for biscuits to be a little more on the thin side when they’re going to be used to build sandwiches. That way you can focus on all the ingredients in the sandwich and not just the two huge pieces of bread on the top and bottom.

Not that I overthink this stuff or anything.

 

 

Use a biscuit cutter or a glass to cut circles (you can dip the cutter in flour if it gets sticky like this one is!)

 

 

Put ’em in an iron skillet or baking pan…

 

 

Brush ’em with melted butter, and bake ’em at 450 (hot hot!) for 10 to 12 minutes, watching them toward the end to make sure they don’t burn.

 

 

Meanwhile, fry some sausage! These are actually regular pre-formed sausage patties that I flattened and pressed into a larger size as they fried. Basically, you want to fry larger, thinner patties of sausage so they’ll fill the size of the biscuits: It’s probably best to use a regular package of sausage and form the patties yourself so you can get them to be the size you want!

 

 

Fry them until done in the middle and nice and brown on the outside, then set them aside for a sec.

Then, Chapter 2 in the “Not Pictured Because I’m an Airhead” series, fry some eggs! I have absolutely no explanation for why I did not get a picture of this when I am somehow able to capture pictures of every other minute detail of my life, but as Pat Conroy wrote in The Prince of Tides, “It is the mystery of life that sustains me now.”

 

 

Basically, you want to have everything ready when the biscuits come out of the oven so that they’re warm when you split them in half.

 

 

Lay a slice of white cheddar (or any kind of cheese you want!) on the bottom half of the biscuit…

 

 

Lay a piece of sausage on top of that…

 

 

Then a fried egg…

 

 

And (the kicker!) a good amount of hot sauce! Don’t skip this part; it makes the sandwich ultra irresistible.

 

 

Pop on the lid, then you can eat/serve it right away…

 

 

Or (even better if you have the time) wrap them in foil for a bit. This seals in the warmth and allows the cheese to melt and everything to settle in and become miraculous.

 

 

And when I say miraculous, I mean…

 

 

Completely and utterly miraculous.

Where would my life be without egg yolk? I shudder to think.

The handy dandy printable is right here, or you can also find it in the right sidebar at the top of the recipe!