Kitchen Little Essentials
For this Blueberry & Lemon Skillet Shortcakes recipe you will need:
A rasp or grater (for the lemon zest)
This Blueberry & Lemon Skillet Shortcakes recipe is exactly the kind of impressively casual (or casually impressive) type of home cooking that I absolutely love. It’s gorgeous; filled with deep purple, jammy blueberries and topped with these stunning flaky sweet biscuits – it’s a total winner.
I almost called this “Blueberry Jam & Biscuits Skillet” because that’s really what it is, but it also would technically qualify as a blueberry cobbler. But honestly what’s in a name? I mean really. No matter what you call it, this Blueberry and Lemon concoction is a fantastic recipe to have in your back pocket all berry season long.
Ingredients for this Blueberry & Lemon Skillet Shortcakes recipe:
I use about six cups of fresh (or frozen!) blueberries for this recipe, and you should know that you are totally free to mix and match berries as you please. I personally love the combo of blueberries and lemon – especially when doused in some luscious vanilla – but I also happen to know this exact recipe works all the same with strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries. Just use whatever you like.
The lemon is essential to recipes like this one, as it elevates the flavors tremendously and brightens the whole dish. Blueberries on their own are kind of tasteless – they’re just alright. But when they team up with lemon, it’s game-on for sure. The lemon comes to play and makes the blueberries sing. We’ll be using both lemon zest and lemon juice here.
Vanilla. Or, my favorite thing. The vanilla extract, like the lemon, will help the blueberries be all that they can be.
Very cold butter. This is essential to creating the extra flaky biscuits that we’ll layer on top of the jammy blueberry mixture. The colder the butter, the more intense the “bursts” in the oven. This creates the explosive action that pushes up and in between the layers of flour to make the best biscuits you will ever try. I am using a biscuit method that I found in Bon Appetit and it’s the best I’ve ever tried. I’ve adapted their recipe here for a sweeter one, with a little extra sugar and some lemon zest (see more below).
- All purpose flour
- Salt
- Granulated sugar
- Lemon zest + juice
- Blueberries
- Vanilla extract
- Honey
- Buttermilk
- Ice cream!
- Crunchy turbinado sugar (game changer)
How to Make the Flakiest Biscuits You’ve Ever Tried
In short? The answer is all in the stacking.
I’m so grateful to the fine folks at Bon Appetit for cracking this code. Flaky biscuits are a thing of beauty and a joy forever, aren’t they? Even only okay biscuit recipes are fantastic. So, anything you can do to elevate and improve upon a basic biscuit is something that will hold my attention. I was totally intrigued by the “stacking” method that the BA team developed, where you roll our your buttermilk dough, cut it into biscuits, and then stack them up on top of one another before flattening and cutting again.
I liken this to lamentation – the method used when creating the flaky layers in puff pastry. That’s very close to what we’re doing with these biscuits here and it WORKS. The stacking creates extra flakiness – extra layers – in your biscuits, and it’s a trick I will be using for the rest of my biscuits making days.
If you like the looks of this recipe, you might also enjoy:
Apple Slump with Vanilla-Cayenne Caramel
Blueberry & Lemon Skillet Shortcakes
- Yield: 6 to 8 servings 1x
Ingredients
6 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
¼ cup honey
¼ cup + 1 TBSP granulated sugar
2 lemons
2 tsp vanilla extract
3.5 cups + 1 TBSP all-purpose flour
2.5 tsp baking powder
¾ tsp salt
2 sticks (1 cup) cold butter cut into small pieces
1 cup buttermilk, plus extra for brushing
Turbinado sugar, for sprinkling (optional but HIGHLY recommended)
Vanilla Ice Cream, for serving (not at all optional)
Instructions
- Put your berries, honey, and 1/4 cup of the sugar in a large cast iron skillet set over medium heat. Cook gently until the berries have burst and released their juices; about 6 to 8 minutes, stirring frequently. Add 1 TBSP of the flour and stir to combine, to break up any clumps. Turn off the heat and add the vanilla as well as the zest and juice of one of the lemons.
- Meanwhile, create your biscuits. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, 1 TBSP sugar, and salt. Add the pieces of cut-up butter and the zest of the other lemon and, using either a pastry blender, two forks, or your fingers to mash and mix in the butter. Just keep working it until the butter is well incorporated (like the size of peas) and seems evenly distributed throughout the dry mix. Pour the buttermilk over top and then work it in with your hands or a wooden spoon. The dough will be “shaggy.”
- Transfer the dough to a work surface dusted with flour. Pat it into a 1”-thick rectangle. Cut it into 4 even squares. Stack the squares on top of one another and flatten again into a 1”-thick rectangle. Cut into biscuits – you choose the size. I do 6 huge ones, but you might think that 12 smaller ones is more civilized. It probably is.
- Place these biscuits in the freezer for 10 minutes (cold butter, remember!).
- Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.
- Arrange the chilled biscuits on top of the blueberry mixture in the skillet, brush them with buttermilk, sprinkle with turbinado sugar, and bake until bubbly and the biscuits are golden brown; about 25 to 30 minutes. Place a baking sheet under your skillet to catch any juices, if needed. Serve with vanilla ice cream.
Notes
If you don’t have a large skillet, you can also bake in a large ceramic baking dish.
