When life gives you sour milk, make biscuits!

This story begins with the left-over buttermilk I had in the fridge from the cake from last week.  The cake ended up turing out wonderfully.  It was super-moist, and the icing was very unique, but it worked perfectly for that particular cake.  I will make it again.

Now, before I digress too much in chocolately goodness... I have been craving good ole' home-made buttery, flaky, tender biscuits for the past couple of weeks.  I feel like biscuits are simply Southern comfort-food at it's best.  My favorite are at the Loveless Cafe here in Nashville, however I wanted to make some at home.  I had all of the ingredients already, including that leftover buttermilk, so I made a batch this past Sunday night.  Bobby Flay actually did a 'throwdown' with the "biscuit lady" herself, the late Carol Fay Ellison at Loveless in 2008.  Surprisingly, Bobby won!

These were incredibly easy to make, and they took about 20 minutes total (including baking).  Since I don't have Carol's recipe, I tried Bobby's (it also was rated 5 out of 5 stars by users on foodnetwork.com).  Click HERE for the full recipe for his biscuits and jam.  The biscuit recipe is as follows:

• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 12 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces, plus 4 tablespoons, melted
• 1 1/2 cups cold buttermilk
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper, not super fine and not coarse, somewhere in between 

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.
Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Using a dough cutter, combine until ingredients are incorporated. Scatter the cold butter pieces over the top of the flour mixture and continue to combine until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add the buttermilk and pulse until the mixture just begins to come together.
Scrape the dough onto a lightly flour counter. Pat the dough into a 10 by 12-inch rectangle about 3/4-inch thick. Use a 3-inch round cutter to cut out biscuits. Press together the scraps of dough, and repeat process. Place the biscuits on 2 baking sheets lined with parchment paper; brush the tops with cream and sprinkle with black pepper. Bake the biscuits for 12 to 15 minutes or until lightly golden brown. Remove from the oven and brush the tops with melted butter.

Here's how mine turned out:

The cracked pepper was an awesome touch.  I also think the brushed cream on the biscuits made them brown up really nicely.  They were incredible.  I think Loveless' biscuits will always be my favorites (maybe there's just something about the unatainable that makes them so appealing), but this recipe will probably be my go-to for biscuits.  As with any recipe, I think good quality ingredients make all the difference in the world.

Because I didn't have the time or much desire to make home-made jam, I grabbed a few extras from the fridge: Perata (Italian pear preserves from Murray's Cheese in NYC), peach preserves, Dalmatia Fig Spread, Tupelo Honey, and of course BUTTER!  Perfect way to end the weekend.