Cream Cheese and Chive Biscuits

This was the first recipe I tried out of my Martha Stewart Baking Handbook a couple of years ago, and I wanted to do a second take because the first time was a bit of a fiasco.

Let’s flashback to that afternoon so long ago…the recipe calls for cream cheese and buttermilk. I didn’t have those things on hand, so I used low fat spreadable cream cheese (that I had for bagels) and regular 1% milk. The recipe states that once the dough is all mixed up it will be “slightly sticky” and to turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. I followed those directions to the letter and found my hands amassed in a sticky gooey blob that was impossible to “knead four times.” I felt like a dinosaur trapped in a tar pit and sincerely hoped that my wedding ring wouldn’t be lost forever (or until someone ate it!) Once I finally extracted my hands from the dough, it was time to roll. With a little flour sprinkled on the dough and the roller, I managed to roll through with much difficulty battling the dough as it desperately clung to anything it encountered.

The recipe says to fold the dough like a business letter into thirds. Ha! Nearly impossible! The lightly floured surface provided little help with this monster.

Once I repeated the folding a few times, it chilled in the refrigerator and was much easier to deal with from then on. They did taste fabulous once baked.

Ok…flash forward to present day (that's where the pictures came from.) I used exactly what the recipe called for, used WAY more flour on the mat, my hands, and the roller, and encountered almost as much trouble. I think these are just temperamental biscuits! Of course they turned out delicious…but I don’t think they are worth the mess and trouble. Perhaps I could make them drop biscuits instead, that would eliminate all of the problems. Maybe next time :)