A sweet biscuit is a cousin to a scone but it’s not as sweet and rich as a scone. It is often a little sweeter than other biscuits and can be loaded with fruit, nuts, or baking chips. They are perfect for breakfast or anytime you would like something satisfying without being indulgent.
Biscuits are often made with a lot of buttermilk, enough that the tang of buttermilk comes through. Beyond taste, buttermilk has a functional purpose—to provide leavening. Buttermilk, an acid, reacts with baking soda, a base to create carbon dioxide bubbles in the dough. To the extent that the baking soda neutralizes the buttermilk, the tang of the buttermilk is gone. Rarely do we find a scone recipe with that tang. Often, we find biscuit recipes loaded with buttermilk so that the tang remains. When we make sweet biscuits using a buttermilk biscuit recipe, the biscuit has a tangy background behind the chips or fruit.
So making a sweet biscuit is a matter of choosing a biscuit mix or recipe and making additions. In addition to adding nuts, fruit, and chips, a sugar or flavor is often added. We’ll give you guidelines.
The Prepared Pantry produces excellent just-add-water biscuit mixes. The buttermilk biscuit mix is great for making sweet biscuits. Of course, your favorite recipe or a competitive mix can be used.
To make a dozen sweet biscuits, consider doing one of the following:
- Add 3/4 cup baking chips
- Add 3/4 cup chopped nuts
- If you want both nuts and chips, add 1/2 to 2/3 cup of each.
Consider adding 1/4 cup granulated sugar. That’s enough to make it just a touch sweeter without losing the character of biscuits. We often add flavor, maybe a fruit flavor to accentuate the fruit in the recipe or a background flavor like vanilla or brown sugar flavor. Hot ovens, 425 degrees, are hard on flavors so we typically use two teaspoons.
