Strawberry Black Pepper Biscuits

This week I've been in NY being a business lady. But before I left town, I made you biscuits!!

Actually, I made them for my friends Tre and Erin. My friend Tre and I did some apartment swap action. Perfect timing made it possible for me to stay at his cute East Village apartment while he crashed at my place in LA. Kind of amazing how it all worked out.

Since him and Erin were driving in late from San Fran, I figured I could put some near-dying strawberries to good use by throwing them into biscuits. I didn't think there was anyway this could be a bad combo. 

And then I remembered something even better than plain strawberry biscuits...strawberry black pepper biscuits. I tried them more than a year ago at an On the Lamb strawberry demo at Surfas.

At the end, they handed out pieces of paper with all of the recipes neatly typed up, and of course, I vowed to stow it in a place I deemed important, thus preventing the possibility of losing it. And I failed at this, obvi. Anyway, nothing a little recipe stalking around the internets couldn't solve. I found the recipe and they were seriously as delicious as I had remembered.

There was buttery, biscuit, flakeyness going on.

Sweetness and tartness (just a hint) from the slightly dehydrated strawberries.

And a small kick from the pepper.

Put some bacon slices in between these biscuits. Or a fried egg.

If you're feeling really traditional, serve it with butter. But not just unsalted, plain butter, but creamy salted butter. Salted butter and I are having a moment right now. Never really tried it until a few weeks ago and OMG is it good.

Is there any better way to welcome someone home at their home away from home than a plate piled high with biscuits with a side of butter?

Strawberry Black Pepper Biscuits

Recipe from On the Lamb

Yields about 12 round biscuits

Print this recipe!

6-7 medium strawberries, hulled & cut into half inch pieces
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder 
¼ teaspoon salt 
1 teaspoon coarsely cracked black pepper 
6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
1 cup of half & half or heavy cream

On a baking sheet, lay out the sliced strawberries. Place in oven for an hour and a half at 200F.

In a medium bowl, whisk together  flour, baking powder, salt & black pepper and transfer to refrigerator to chill for 5 minutes.

Add the cold butter to the flour mixture and using a pastry knife, or working quickly with your hands, break up the butter into the flour. Try not to warm the butter too much. Once the butter is in pea or lentil size bits, fold in the strawberries. Pour about ¾ cup of cream into the bowl & incorporate, add more as needed to pull all the ingredients together. Once everything is just combined, turn the dough onto a floured surface and either roll or pat the dough into a rectangle that is about ¾ inch thick. Cut into a dozen rounds or cut into squares, can render up to 16 square biscuits.

Brush the tops with milk or cream and place on an ungreased baking sheet, bake in the middle rack for about 10-12 minutes in a preheated oven set to 375F, rotate the pan once during baking to ensure even coloration. When biscuits are lightly brown along the edges and/or the bottoms are a rich even brown, they're done.