Cornbread Biscuits

Once upon a time there was a sweet little buttermilk biscuit.  Sweet little buttermilk biscuit was walking through the forest when she came upon the hunky cornbread muffin. It was love at first sight.  They had a whirlwind courtship and a shot gun wedding.  They probably shouldn't have listened to Barry White, or Sade for that matter.  Tisk. Tisk. Naughty, naughty little quick breads.

Seriously, these cornmeal buttermilk biscuits from Liv Life are half biscuit and half cornbread muffin.  If a biscuit and a cornbread muffin could have a baby, this would be it.

These biscuits may look like cornbread in their coloring, but the texture is that of your run of the mill buttermilk biscuit. They taste similar to cornbread, but instead of the usual gritty mouth feel of  cornbread, they have the light airy meltyness of a biscuit. I think I would have been weirded out after the first bite, had I not prepared myself for the flavor hybrid.

I think I may have over handled the biscuits. They didn't rise like they did on Liv Life.  This may have also been because I cut the biscuits with a pizza cutter.  After I did this, I remembered that when you cut biscuits you should use an up and down motion, not side to side or you will lose some of the loft in your biscuits. 

Luckily, my cutting, or over handling error, did not result in super dense, rock hard biscuits.  They were denser than they probably should have been, but were still easy to break apart and chew.  Not too shabby for my first attempt at biscuits from scratch.


Cornmeal Buttermilk Biscuits from Liv Life
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons chilled butter, cut into small pieces
1/2 cup low-fat buttermilk

Preheat oven to 450°. Lightly spoon flour into a dry measuring cup; level with a knife. Combine flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl; cut in butter with a pastry blender or 2 knives til mix resembles coarse meal. Add buttermilk; stir just til moist. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Pat dough into 8x4" rectangle. Cut dough by making 1 lengthwise cut and 3 crosswise cuts to form 8 biscuits. Place biscuits, 1 inch apart, on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake at 450° for 12 min til golden. Serve biscuits warm or at room temperature.