Corn Flour Biscuits
I bought a bag of Corn Flour as part of my exploration of cooking without gluten. Turns out most recipes mix it with regular flour (insert frustrated, frowny-face emoji here). I did manage to find Corn Flour Biscuits with Maple Butter, courtesy of Barry from Rockrecipes.com. He’s the b’y that sails the boat and cooks up a storm on the other side of the country in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Thank you Barry! I decided I’d just substitute gluten-free flour. I did not give Compliments Gluten-free flour another shot at ruining yet another baking experiment. Sorry Compliments, you’ve got some work to do. The flour you produce just doesn’t cut it. Instead I used Bob’s Red Mill 1 to 1 Gluten-Free Flour. I also wanted to avoid milk and Barry’s biscuits required buttermilk, which I love, but I have friends who don’t drink milk, so I “asked the Google” if you could make buttermilk out of a plant-based milk. The Kitchen Professor said, “Hell Yes.” And here’s how. Now, I did use butter (I love butter) and lard, but if you wanted to I don’t see any reason you couldn’t try this with 1/2 cup vegetable shortening. If you do, let me know how it goes.
Ingredients
- 2 cups gluten-free flour (or regular baking flour if you don’t care)
- 2 cups gluten-free yellow corn flour
- 9 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 cup salted butter (very cold & cut in 1/2 inch cubes)
- 1/4 cup lard (also very cold & cut in cubes)
- 2 cups plant-based buttermilk (or regular butter milk if it doesn’t matter)
Method
- Preheat oven to 4oo degrees F.
- Make your plant-based buttermilk (it’s supposed to stand for about 10 minute to thicken so do this first).
- Line a baking sheet with baker’s parchment.
- Blend the gluten-free flours together with the baking powder and baking soda in a food processor.
- Pulse in the cubes of butter until just crumbly like a flaky pastry dough. You want to see small pieces of butter in your four (think a pie crust).
- Put the mixture into a large mixing bowl.
- Make a well and pour in the plant-based buttermilk.
- Fold the dry mixture through the liquid with a spatula until the flour disappears. DO NOT OVER MIX.
- Turn the sticky dough onto a floured work surface (use gluten-free flour). It will be super sticky.
- Sprinkle the dough with more flour and flour your hands before handling the dough.
- Gently pat the dough into a thickness of 1 and a half to two inches.
- Use a 2″ biscuit cutter dipped in gluten-free flour and cut out your biscuits (re-dip the cutter as you go so it doesn’t stick.) Net time I’m going to be lazy and cut the dough into 2″ x 2″ squares. Who cares if they are round or square? It’s how they taste that matters!
- Transfer the biscuits to the parchment lined baking sheets and bake for 20 minutes or until the tops are golden.
- Serve warm with butter or honey cinnamon butter. If you want to make honey cinnamon butter beat a 3:1 ratio of butter to sweet stuff together with 1/2- 1 tsp cinnamon and let it chill again once incorporated.