Cathead Biscuits

Fluffy, buttery biscuits that actually act like biscuits!  See how gorgeous they are!

For those of you who are not familiar with this type of biscuit, cathead biscuits are a traditional southern biscuit named so because they are about the size of a cat's head.  Yes, it is incredibly original and creative naming.  They come together very easily and much faster than rolled biscuits.

To cook these, you will need a deep cast-iron skillet.  If you are like me, and totally don't own one of those, a stone cake pan works great too.  I do recommend using cast-iron or stone really strongly for this because the way they heat helps the biscuits form and cook properly.  Even with a well-seasoned pan, buttering the bottom is a good idea.  It helps prevent clinging chunks.

Once you've got the pan ready, go ahead and put all the dry ingredients into a wide flat-bottomed bowl. 

Stir it around a bit until it looks fairly uniform.  Our goal at this stage is to not have big streaks of just one ingredient.

Then add the butter!  I generally buy half-sticks so yours may look different, but don't worry about it.  Also, I know that baking rules say to use unsalted butter.  I don't do that because unsalted butter made me very ill the times I've tried it.  I use regular salted butter and it works just fine.

Then cut the butter with a pastry blender.  I use one that is shaped more like a potato masher because it's sturdy enough to cut through cold butter without bending.

See, it just pushes through!

Once the butter is in coarse breadcrumb size, add the milk.  Then you stick your hand in and swirl it around.  The dough ready when it starts to come together.  There will still be chunks but those are mostly butter so it's fine.  But there should not be any pure liquid just sitting there.

Also, the dough is quite sticky.  So your hands will be creatively accessorized.  I do not recommend using gloves to avoid that because dough is nearly impossible to get off of food grade gloves and you will lose a lot of it to the trash can.  Theoretically.  Not that I would ever have tried such a thing and been vastly disappointed.

I was supervised closely during this process.

Then you take a clump of dough and roughly shape it into a ball.  Then plonk it into your buttered pan.

It should come out to six biscuits of this size.  I do five around the edge and one in the center. 

Be careful that the center on is not the biggest.  It's easy to add a little extra if that's the last one, but if it is bigger than the others it can form a line of not-cooked weirdness.  So distribute extra dough to the exterior biscuits.

Then pop it in the oven for about 20 minutes.  If it doesn't feel wiggly underneath when you poke the top, they're done.

They will need to sit and cool down for a few minutes, just until the butter stops bubbling around them.  Then lift them out and devour the delicious warm, buttery goodness!

Printable Cathead Biscuit Recipe