As American Southerners, we just love homemade biscuits. But we also know that baking a large batch of biscuits in a household with only two or three people will mean there will be leftovers, and those leftover biscuits will get dry in a hurry.

What to do. What to do.

I pride myself on coming up with creative ways to use leftover food. This is that kind of recipe.

A couple nights ago I made a dinner that included a batch of biscuits by my late grandmother’s recipe. (While we have several solid biscuit recipes here on #FoodieScore, I reserve a special place for Grandma’s biscuits. You CAN find it in my book, Eating Me Alive.)

I pride myself on coming up with creative ways to use leftover food. This is that kind of recipe.

Instead of struggling through eating leftover biscuits that need about a cup of milk alongside them to make them more palatable, I decided I wanted to use a few other ingredients sitting around in my kitchen, especially a container of blueberries in the fridge, to make a dessert.

So I split my crumbly biscuits in half, topped them with butter to melt in the oven and then covered them in a sugar-added blueberry mixture to help infuse the old dry bread with moisture and new life. At this point I almost feel like I’m making some kind of culinary Frankenstein! It’s a kind of odd analogy, but that is kind of what jazzing up leftovers is all about. You add some new parts, adapt others and add a little love to renew something previously made.

After I baked the cobbler, I added a scoop of creamy vanilla ice cream on top because I love the way the part-melted ice cream mixes with biscuit-y cobbler. In the summer, I dream about ice cream-covered berry cobbler. It’s overkill, perhaps, but that also makes it Southern! We just need to eat like this sparingly.

When I served a bowl of my new spur-of-the-moment creation with my wife Molly, she didn’t say much. The dessert also disappeared quickly. She’s not AS much of a berry-desserts fan as I am, but she wholeheartedly approved of this one.

In our house, the goal is to enjoy all food as much as possible—and prevent all food waste—not just eat because it’s an essential process. Contrary to previous generations who were thankful just to have something they could afford to eat, many people today would throw out dry biscuits. The thought did cross my mind to create a quick gravy and smother the biscuits. But I decided this was a better idea.

You can add more butter to this. You can add more berries. You can add more than one scoop of ice cream. Make it your own. Just enjoy it, and let us know when you do!

 

Leftover Biscuit Berry Cobbler

What You Need:

Leftover Biscuits (I used 4, each split in half, offering 8 pieces.)

4 tablespoons butter, cut into small pats

2 cups berries (I used blueberries I had on hand.)

1/4 cup white sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 tablespoon lemon juice

What You Do:

1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees, and butter/spray the bottom of an 8-by-8 pan, like the kind you would use for brownies.

2. Cut your leftover biscuits in half. Arrange them single-depth along the bottom of your baking dish.

3. Slice your butter into about 1-tablespoon pieces, cut them in half again, and then arrange them atop your biscuits.

4. In a medium mixing bowl, stir together berries, sugars and lemon juice. Spread the mixture over your biscuits-and-butter base.

5. Bake for about 12 minutes, top with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream, and serve!