Cream Biscuits

Perhaps the operative name for this recipe should be Dream Biscuits rather than Cream Biscuits. I’ll admit that I’ve been fearful of taking on homemade biscuits but this recipe has changed my life. 

After having tried a couple different biscuit recipes in the past (these pecan sour cream biscuits and these thyme and cheddar biscuits), I felt like I was always doing something wrong. I could never get those tall, flaky biscuits that I kept seeing everywhere. And man it was frustrating!

How to Make Cream Biscuits

With one bowl, a wooden spoon, and less than 10 minutes of prep time, these biscuits are ready to be baked without any plausible biscuit catastrophes. There’s no worrying about pea-sized pieces of butter or fretting about whether the butter is cold enough for this biscuit recipe!

To make these cream biscuits, you’ll mix all of the ingredients together in a bowl and then do 30 seconds of kneading on the counter top. You might need to add a little extra cream if the dough is really dry.

Cream Biscuits

Then pat out the dough, cut out rounds with a cookie or biscuit cutter, and bake them off. It’s an amazingly simple biscuit recipe with extraordinary results!! 

These cream biscuits are high-risers and show off the beautiful layers that you expect with a homemade biscuit. But there’s a little trick to getting that rise in your biscuits! (Keep reading!)

How to Cut Biscuits

You might have ever given too much thought to how you cut biscuit dough into biscuit rounds but there is a tiny bit of technique that’s needed. It’s not difficult by any means but rather, just something to keep in mind when you make biscuits.

Once you’ve patted the dough out into a thick circle on your work surface, you’re ready to cut the dough.

For these biscuits, a 2 ½-inch round cookie cutter works great. I have a number of sets of cookie cutters in my kitchen but my favorites are the sets with graduated sizes.

My go-to set of cutters for biscuits is this Ateco set of 6 cutters that I found on Amazon. Each cutter has a plain and a fluted edge so you only need 1 set for all of your fluted and plain biscuit (or cookie!) cutting needs!

The trick to cutting biscuits that rise up tall is to get a clean cut right through the dough to the work surface. Nice, sharp cutters like the ones I linked above help greatly with this!

To get that clean cut through the dough, you shouldn’t twist the cutter when you hit the work surface since that also twists the dough and causes some of the layers to smush together. Just push down firmly on the cutter until you hit the work surface and then pull it straight up and out of the dough.

Easy peasy!

What to Serve These Biscuits With

These cream biscuits are the perfect addition to breakfast or dinner (casual or holiday alike). Obviously, they’re a match made in heaven for biscuits and gravy and these are always ALWAYS our go-to biscuit for biscuits and gravy.

They’re an excellent vessel for sliders or egg and cheese sandwiches – with or without bacon, sausage, spinach, etc. – since they aren’t tough or crumbly at all. Or simply just butter them up when they’re still hot and slather on your favorite jam!

For dinner, you could serve these homemade biscuit beauties with this sausage and lentil soup, this split pea soup, or this roasted tomato basil soup.

If you’re making chili, make these biscuits too! They’d be phenomenal with this classic beef chili, this mole chicken chili, or this chili con carne.

5 Ingredient Cream Biscuits

And of course, no fried chicken dinner would be complete with a side of mac and cheese and some of these fluffy biscuits. Whether you’re making turkey meatloaf, classic fried chicken or chicken with a creamy gravy, these biscuits are DELICIOUS!

They are pretty much perfect biscuits and like I said, they are my dream biscuits.

5 ingredient cream biscuits

5 Ingredient Cream Biscuits

Yield: 8 biscuits
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Bake Time: 15 minutes
Total Time: 25 minutes

Cream biscuits are SO easy to make! Needing only 5 ingredients, 1 bowl, and 20 minutes of your time, it's a dream to pump these homemade biscuits out on a weekend morning to go with your biscuits and gravy, scrambled eggs, or for a homemade egg sandwich. They're great with dinner too and go so great with soup, chili, and fried chicken!

Ingredients

  • 2 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for the counter
  • 2 teaspoons granulated sugar
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon table salt
  • 1 ½ cups heavy cream

Instructions

  1. Place oven rack in the upper-middle position and preheat oven to 425º. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
  2. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Stir in 1 ¼ cups of cream with a wooden spoon until a dough forms, about 30 seconds. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured counter, leaving behind any flour left in the bottom of the bowl. Use the remaining ¼ cup of cream to moisten any flour left in the bowl and add to the dough. Gather into a ball and knead for about 30 seconds or until smooth.
  3. Using your hands, shape the dough into a ¾-inch thick circle. Using a 2 ½-inch floured cutter, cut the biscuits into rounds and place on prepared baking sheet. Reshape the dough once to cut additional biscuits. If desired, the baking sheet can be wrapped in plastic and refrigerated for up to 2 hours before baking.
  4. Bake biscuits until golden brown, about 15 minutes, making sure to rotate halfway through baking.

Notes

adapted from The New Best Recipe by the editors of Cook's Illustrated via Cook Like a Champion

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Leave a Comment

  • November 20, 2011 at 7:52 AM

    These sound so yummy! What a nice biscuit!

  • November 20, 2011 at 8:13 AM

    I love this recipe. I have been using it as a base for many recipes over the years. Scones, biscuit topped chicken pot pie, cobbler and many more. It is just so easy and makes the best biscuits every.
    One of my most fun and easy recipes. Always turns out great.

  • Pam
    November 20, 2011 at 10:32 AM

    What a great idea to avoid the hassle of the butter! I cannot believe I’ve never heard of this before. Wow. Thanks.

  • November 20, 2011 at 11:38 AM

    I made this exact same recipe for breakfast last week, and I can vouch for its ease and deliciousness! I had trouble limiting myself to 1 – I could have easily scarfed down the whole batch!

  • November 20, 2011 at 11:41 AM

    These biscuits look beautiful – and tasty of course. I love the picture with jam. Looks like it came out of a magazine. Thanks for sharing the recipe.

  • November 20, 2011 at 12:18 PM

    Sold. They look beautiful, I trust your opinion about their simplicity, and I will therefore be making these on Thanksgiving. Thanks!

  • November 20, 2011 at 1:28 PM

    These really are dreamy. I love that I can make them whenever, without the fuss of cutting butter and making a mess in the kitchen. Yours look gorgeous, especially with that jam/jelly!

  • November 21, 2011 at 7:11 AM

    These are the best looking biscuits (or scones as we old englanders call them!) I’ve ever seen! They have the dreamiest rise – I’ll definitely be making these!

  • November 21, 2011 at 12:46 PM

    What a revelation! Cutting in the shortening or butter was the one step I always disliked.

  • November 23, 2011 at 4:13 AM

    I need a lot of these biscuits for the jars and jars of my berry marmalades and jams that line my fridge…I swear I need to have everything cleared up because stuff will accumulate again by end of this week…Thanksgiving leftovers and after party to-go ziploc bags.
    They look so delicious just by themselves, and easy to prepare…Thanks for sharing!

  • November 23, 2011 at 12:37 PM

    I have to try these, I’m all for shortcuts. I love how high they’ve risen. I’m assuming they could be made as drop biscuits, too? (That’s how lazy I am)

  • November 23, 2011 at 12:50 PM

    Wow… so moist and fluff too..

  • December 9, 2011 at 9:49 AM

    Gorgeous biscuits! You’ve inspired me to keep trying for a biscuit that rises high…

  • Ana
    December 17, 2011 at 11:49 PM

    These were amazing – thank you! By far the fluffiest, flakiest biscuits I’ve tried. Maybe you need Southern genes to make the butter/shortening biscuits, because mine usually turn out like hockey pucks. These were so easy to make and delicious, even for a biscuit killer like me. Thank you! 🙂

  • December 27, 2011 at 11:37 PM

    I made these for our Christmas dinner and they were fantastic! So simple, but tasted wonderfully rich. I have a feeling these will make frequent appearances on our table. Thanks for the recipe (and the beautiful photos!)

  • February 14, 2012 at 4:03 PM

    These look wonderful. Have you ever tried making them with white whole wheat flour or whole wheat pastry flour? I try to make as much of our bread as possible with whole grain and would love to try these with one of those flours.

    • February 14, 2012 at 6:51 PM

      Laura: The white whole wheat would probably work since you can typically use it interchangeably with AP but I’m not sure about the w.w. pastry flour since I’ve never used it before.

  • Holly
    April 8, 2013 at 5:16 AM

    I made these and it seemed way too much cream for the flour. The dough was so gloppy I had to spoon it into muffin tins and it took forever to bake. That said, it tasted delicious but next time I’ll use only 1 cup cream.

    • April 8, 2013 at 12:55 PM

      Not sure if you started out with only 1 1/4 cup cream but you can always add a little more flour to firm up a loose biscuit dough.

  • tara
    April 14, 2013 at 5:21 PM

    These look delicious, I was looking for an easy, quick way to make homemade biscuits for our weekly breakfast for dinner meals. Has anyone ever tried to make the dough ahead of time, or even put everything together minus the cream to make it easier after work?

  • Maddy
    April 26, 2020 at 2:24 AM

    I shape the my dough into a rectangle and cut into squares. Works great, no dough waste or re-gathering.
    Also, freeze them – take out and bake whatever you need.

    • Tara
      April 26, 2020 at 2:07 PM

      Agreed! This is a great zero-waste recipe. And yes, the dough freezes great. Thanks so much for coming back to leave a review, Maddy!

  • Miranda
    May 12, 2020 at 7:27 AM

    The ingredients were not accurate. After stirring in 1 1/4c of cream, it was like batter; there was no flour left in the bottom of the bowl. I had to add more flour and no more cream and they were so dense.

    • Tara
      May 24, 2020 at 12:04 AM

      Hi Miranda, I’m sorry you had trouble with this recipe. The ingredients are indeed accurate, as I’ve made this recipe many times. It’s possible that you may have mis-measured the flour, as there are a number of ways this can go awry.

  • Kathy Gibbons
    September 14, 2020 at 11:05 PM

    Has anyone ever substituted buttermilk for the heavy cream?