This is one of my all-time favorite recipes! These cheddar bay biscuits are truly wonderful in every way, and my mom and I can eat an entire batch by ourselves if we aren’t very determined not to! They are crunchy on the outside, light and tender on the inside, and perfectly garlicky and cheesy! And, if that weren’t enough, they are really easy to make! Here are the ingredients you will need:
I always use either Freely Vegan flour or my two-ingredient gluten free flour blend to make biscuits, and have not tested this recipe with any of my other GF flour blends. They should all work, but you may not get biscuits as light and fluffy as these if you use one of my other blends. (Update: several of my readers tried making the biscuits with Bob’s Red Mill 1:1 gluten free flour blend and got good results. So, I tested the Bob’s side by side with my two-ingredient flour. The texture of the Bob’s was not as fabulous as mine, but was still very good!) Use regular all-purpose flour if you are not gluten free.
There are quite a few cheddar bay biscuit recipes online, but none of them use all of the same steps that I do. It may be that not all of them are necessary when you are using wheat flour with dairy butter. For vegan and/or gluten free biscuits, though, every step in this recipe is important, so please read through all of them before beginning. Keeping your ingredients really cold is critical to getting beautiful biscuits so don’t skip the chilling times!
Start by adding the vinegar to the soy milk, then place the “buttermilk” in the freezer and set a timer for 30 minutes. Add your grated vegan cheese to the freezer now as well. (Daiya Farmhouse block-style cheddar works perfectly!)
As soon as the “buttermilk” is in the freezer, melt the vegan butter (I use Earth Balance Buttery Spread) in the microwave. This only takes about 30 seconds in my microwave. Put it in the fridge to cool.
As soon as the vegan butter is in the fridge, whisk the flour, baking powder, sugar, granulated garlic, cayenne pepper, and salt together in a medium-sized mixing bowl. Place the bowl of dry ingredients in the freezer. You should now have three bowls in the freezer (the “buttermilk”, grated cheese, and dry ingredients) and one in the fridge (the melted butter.)
When your timer goes off, remove the “buttermilk” from the freezer. It should be starting to freeze around the edges like this:
Stir the icy bits into the “buttermilk”, then drizzle the melted and cooled vegan butter into the very cold milk one large spoonful at a time. Spoon milk over the drizzled butter but do not stir in the butter, because you want clumps of butter to form in the cold milk.
This is what you want the mixture to look like:
Get your bowl of dry ingredients out of the freezer, make a well in the center, then pour the liquid mixture into the well:
Stir just to combine:
Get your grated vegan cheese out of the freezer and stir just enough to mix it in. Place the bowl back in the freezer and set a timer for 10 minutes:
Now, you have to decide if you want scooped or cut-out biscuits. Personally, I prefer to make these as scooped biscuits because the nooks and crannies on the tops hold the garlic butter you’ll brush on later better than flat tops do. Scooping is also easier and saves time because you just scoop the chilled biscuit dough onto a lined pan. I use a number 12 scoop and that makes eight good-sized biscuits. Do not pack the dough into the scoop, but do scrape any excess dough off the edges of the scoop before releasing the biscuit onto the baking sheet.
Place the pan in the freezer and set a timer for 30 minutes. This will rechill the fat and help your biscuits to bake up light and fluffy.
Preheat your oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit while the biscuits are chilling. (I turn my oven on as soon as I put the biscuits in the freezer, because my oven takes 20 minutes to get up to temperature and I forget to come back to turn it on if I wait!)
Bake the chilled biscuits for about 24 minutes at 450 degrees Fahrenheit until the tops are golden brown.
Melt the butter for the topping, then mix in the granulated garlic and dried parsley:
Brush the garlic butter onto the warm biscuits:
Serve immediately and enjoy! I love to eat these biscuits with a big bowl of my Grandpa’s bean soup:
Just look at that gorgeous biscuit!
For cut-out biscuits, you will also chill the biscuit dough in the freezer for 10 minutes before shaping it. While you are waiting, grease and flour your biscuit cutter and flour a piece of waxed paper. You will also need a small bowl of flour to dip the cutter in between cutting each biscuit. (Please see my plain biscuit post for details on the biscuit cutters that I use and more detailed info on cutting out biscuits in general.) Scrape the chilled dough onto the floured waxed paper, then sprinkle more flour onto the dough:
Gently pat the floured dough out to about 1/2″ thick:
Use the waxed paper to fold the dough in half as shown:
Unfold the waxed paper, turn the dough sideways, and gently pat it out again. Repeat the folding and patting out a total of five times, shaping the dough for cutting after the last fold. Sprinkle more flour on the waxed paper as needed to keep the dough from sticking.
After the last fold, shape the dough into a rectangle 7 1/2 by 5 1/4 inches.
You will get nine biscuits with a 2 3/8″ biscuit cutter. Cut six biscuits to start, pushing straight down and lifting straight up with no twisting at all. Twisting will seal the cut edge of the biscuit and keep it from rising properly. Shake the cutter a bit to release each biscuit, then dip the cutter in flour again before cutting the next biscuit.
Squish the scraps together and cut two more, then do the same for one last biscuit.
Transfer your biscuits to a parchment or silpat-lined baking sheet. Hold them from the top and bottom or use a spatula when you move them. You want those edges to stay rough and not get sealed or squished together. Place the biscuits on the pan so they are touching if you like softer sides, and up to 1/4″ apart if you like crunchier sides. (I personally like to place the biscuits almost touching but not even 1/8″ apart to get the best rise without them tipping to the side too much as they bake.)
As with the scooped version, chill the unbaked biscuits in the freezer for 30 minutes. Preheat your oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit while you wait. Once the biscuits are chilled, bake for about 24 minutes until they are golden brown.
Separate the biscuits and let them cool for a few minutes before brushing them with garlic butter:
As with the scooped version, melt the butter for the topping, then mix in the granulated garlic and dried parsley. Brush the garlic butter onto the warm biscuits:
Serve immediately and enjoy!
I’m so glad that Ashley Alexander from Living Free Ashley saw this post! She loved the biscuits and made a wonderful recipe video about them!
Perfect Vegan (& Gluten Free) Cheddar Bay Biscuits!
These delicious vegan cheddar bay biscuits are perfectly garlicky, crunchy on the outside, and wonderfully light and fluffy on the inside! You can use either gluten free or regular all-purpose flour, depending on your dietary needs.
Ingredients
Biscuits:
- 15 g (1 TBS) Distilled Vinegar
- 225 g (1 c - 1 TBS) Original Soy or other Plant Milk
- 112 g (1/2 c) Vegan Butter (I use Earth Balance Buttery Spread)
- 255 g (2 c) Gluten Free Flour Blend or All-Purpose Flour (See recipe notes below!)
- 20 g (4 tsp) Baking Powder (I use Rumford)
- 12 g (1 TBS) Vegan Sugar
- 6.4 g (1 tsp) Salt
- 6.0 g (1 3/4 tsp) Granulated Garlic
- 0.3 g (1/8 tsp) Cayenne Pepper
- 3.5 oz Grated Vegan Cheddar Cheese (I use Daiya Farmhouse Block-Style)
Garlic Butter:
- 42 g (3 TBS) Vegan Butter (I use Earth Balance Buttery Spread)
- 1.7 g (1/2 tsp) Granulated Garlic
- 0.9 g (1 tsp) Dried Parsley
Instructions
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Every step in this recipe is important, so please read through all of them before beginning. Keeping your ingredients really cold is critical to getting beautiful biscuits so don’t skip the chilling times!
-
Add the vinegar to the soy milk. You will have 240 g (1 c) of vegan buttermilk. (If you are measuring your ingredients, add the TBS of vinegar to your measuring cup and then add milk until you have one cup.) Place the “buttermilk” in the freezer and set a timer for 30 minutes. Add your grated vegan cheese to the freezer now as well.
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As soon as the “buttermilk” is in the freezer, melt the vegan butter (I use Earth Balance Buttery Spread) in the microwave. This only takes about 30 seconds in my microwave. Put it in the fridge to cool.
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As soon as the vegan butter is in the fridge, whisk the flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, granulated garlic, and cayenne together in a medium-sized mixing bowl. Place the bowl in the freezer. You should now have three bowls in the freezer (the "buttermilk", grated cheese, and the dry ingredients) and one in the fridge (the melted butter.)
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When your timer goes off, remove the “buttermilk” from the freezer. It should be starting to freeze around the edges. Stir the icy bits into the “buttermilk”, then drizzle the melted and cooled vegan butter into the very cold milk one large spoonful at a time. Spoon milk over the drizzled butter but do not stir in the butter, because you want clumps of butter to form in the cold milk.
-
Get your bowl of dry ingredients and the grated cheese out of the freezer. Make a well in the center of the flour, then pour the liquid mixture into the well. Stir just to combine, then mix in the grated cheese. Place the bowl back in the freezer and set a timer for 10 minutes.
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For scooped biscuits:
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silpat. Scoop the chilled biscuit dough with a number 12 scoop, scraping off any excess dough off the scoop before releasing the dough onto the baking sheet. You should have eight good-sized biscuits. Look at the blog post photos to see what they should look like.
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For cut-out biscuits:
Spray a 2 3/8" biscuit cutter with a squirt of non-stick spray, then wipe it all over the cutter (not the handle). Dip the greased cutter in some flour in a small bowl to coat it. This will keep the first biscuit from sticking to the cutter. You will not need to spray the cutter again, but you will need to dip it in flour in between cutting each biscuit.
Place a piece of waxed paper down on your work surface and sprinkle it with flour. Have your greased and floured biscuit cutter ready too.
Get your biscuit dough out of the freezer, scrape it out onto the floured waxed paper, and sprinkle it with more flour. Gently pat the floured dough out to about 1/2″ thick. Please look at the blog post for step-by-step photos.
Use the waxed paper to fold the dough in half. Fold the waxed paper back down, and add more flour if needed. Turn the dough sideways, and gently pat it out again. Repeat the folding and patting out a total of five times, shaping the dough for cutting after the last fold.
For nine biscuits with a 2 3/8″ cutter, shape the dough into a rectangle 7 1/2 by 5 1/4 inches. Cut six biscuits, pushing straight down and lifting straight up with no twisting at all. Twisting will seal the cut edge of the biscuit and keep it from rising properly. Shake the cutter a bit to release each biscuit, then dip the cutter in flour again before cutting the next biscuit. Gather the scraps into a rectangle just big enough for two more biscuits and cut as before. Repeat for one last biscuit.
Transfer your biscuits to a parchment or silpat-lined baking sheet. Hold them from the top and bottom or use a spatula when you move them. You want those edges to stay rough and not get sealed or squished together. Place the biscuits on the pan so they are touching if you like softer sides, and up to 1/4″ apart if you like crunchier sides. (I personally like to place the biscuits almost touching but not even 1/8″ apart to get the best rise without them tipping to the side too much as they bake.)
-
For either scooped or cut-out biscuits, place the pan in the freezer and set a timer for 30 minutes. This will rechill the fat and help your biscuits to bake up light and fluffy.
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Preheat your oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit while the biscuits are chilling.
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Bake the chilled biscuits for 22 to 26 minutes at 450 degrees Fahrenheit until the tops are golden brown. Nine cut-out biscuits take 22 to 24 minutes and eight scooped biscuits take 24 to 26 minutes in my oven. All ovens are different, however, so watch your biscuits closely after 20 minutes.
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While the biscuits are baking, melt the butter for the garlic butter. Mix in the garlic and parsley.
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Separate cut-out biscuits as soon as you remove them from the oven. Allow both scooped and cut-out biscuits to cool down for a few minutes before brushing them with the garlic butter. Enjoy!
Recipe Notes
- I highly recommend using a scale to weigh your ingredients, especially the liquids and the flour. Too much or too little of either can easily ruin your biscuits, and measuring errors are extremely common.
- I always use Freely Vegan flour or my two-ingredient gluten free flour blend and I have not tested this recipe with any of my other GF flour blends. They should all work, but you may not get biscuits as light and fluffy as these if you use one of my other blends. (Update: several of my readers tried making the biscuits with Bob's Red Mill 1:1 gluten free flour blend and got good results. So, I tested the Bob's side by side with my two-ingredient flour. The texture of the Bob's was not as fabulous as mine, but was still very good.) Use regular all-purpose flour if you are not gluten free.
These are so tasty i love this recipe!!!
Thank you, Karen!
Absolutely loved them!!! Thank you all the way from Costa Rica!! They tasted it amazing!!
I’m so glad you love these biscuits, Gabi!
These are delicious. Great receipe.
Thank you! I’m so happy that you like these biscuits!
This is something I need to try! They look so good!!!
Thank you! They really are wonderful so I hope you try them!
Gluten Free Flour Blend (made with The Plant Based Egg)
What does that mean? Does Bob red mill’s 1 to 1 GF baking flour work? Do you have to use an egg substitute?
If you are using all-purpose wheat flour, you do not need any egg replacement for this recipe. If you are gluten free, you need to use flour that has no gums and uses The Plant Based Egg as a substitute. I always use my two-ingredient GF flour for biscuits and they always come out perfectly! A big part of why this recipe works is the technique, but I made a lot of awful GF biscuits before I figured out how to get rid of the usual gums. You can try the Bob’s, but I can’t guarantee the results.
Just made these! They are ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!!!
That’s wonderful, Zoe! I’m so glad you like the biscuits!
I love your step-by-step instructions! They are detailed and tell me exactly what to do and when to do it, which a lot of recipes lack. Keep the great recipes coming!
Thank you, Sarah!
These are amazing!
Is it possible to freeze the biscuit dough for future use and then bake them from frozen? I’m thinking of Thanksgiving prep work 😉
Thanks, Sandy! I think you could follow the recipe through the last chilling step, but let the unbaked biscuits freeze completely and store them in a ziplock bag until you’re ready to bake them. But, I don’t know if baking them fully frozen or letting them partially defrost first would be better. I’m guessing the partial defrost and I would probably take the biscuits out of the freezer and place them on the baking sheet somewhere between 20 to 40 minutes ahead of baking them. The usual chilling time is not long enough for the centers to get frozen so the biscuits bake through by the time the outsides are brown. That’s going to be the tricky part of baking them after freezing, so I would definitely recommend a practice run before Thanksgiving anyway! Please let me know how it goes and I’ll add the info to the recipe notes.
Thank you so much for sharing this. I have tried this recipe and for some reason the results are crumbly and dry. I notice this before i scoop them to be put on the pan. I dont know why it is so crubmly and not at all doughy – please help if you can.
Hi Amina,
I have never had these biscuits turn out dry or crumbly, so something definitely went wrong. I’ll do my best to help you figure out what might have happened, though. What flour did you use, which butter and plant milk did you use, and did you weigh your ingredients?
thank you!
i use the freely vegan w/ the plant based egg in it. whole foods 365 soy milk and earth balance butter. no i havent weighed the ingredients so i will try that this weekend.
while you’re here – i have a question about the vitamin c crystals – is this just vitamin C powder? i can’t seem to find it anywhere but vitacost that takes a week to deliver.. thank you soo much!!
Hi Amina,
Those ingredients work very well in the biscuits, so weighing your ingredients should solve the problem. (It’s really easy to get too much flour when measuring!) Also, be sure to use a spatula to scrape out all the butter and sour soy milk into your flour mixture. At least a tablespoon of liquid can stick to the container otherwise and losing that much really does make a difference.
You should be able to use any ascorbic acid crystals or powder in my bread recipes, as long as that’s the only ingredient. I have found the Country Life brand at Whole Foods before, so you might want to check there.
I must say, I questioned how this would work. Everything within me said you don’t melt the buttery spread first, but they came out delicious! Although I just ordered your egg mix & it has yet to arrive so I used aqua faba in this with the Bob’s 1:1, adding a little extra flour to make up for the extra liquid & it worked well. Nice, crisp outside and moist layers on the inside.
I’m so glad you enjoyed the biscuits, Kim!
Can you explain what 1C-1TBS of plant milk means? Not sure what the measurement should be
Hi Krystal! Sorry for the confusion! It means to use 1 TBS less than 1 cup. If you have a digital kitchen scale, use 225 g of the plant milk.
Thank you for the clarification. I can’t wait to make them!
Please let me know how they turn out!