Maple Bacon Biscuits

Since getting married, Trevor and I have come to learn that marriage doesn’t mean the end of the peculiar dance that is a first date.

When you get married, you date other couples.

And apparently you also watch a lot of Game of Thrones and eat a lot of biscuits. But more on that in a minute.

I always thought it was just one of those jokes they wrote for sitcoms, drawing parallels between the dating of two single people and the double dating of two established couples.

But it’s real.

In both first date scenarios, you worry you’ll look stupid, that they won’t like you, or that it will just be plain awkward. Typical dating has the danger of looking foolish in front of a crush. Double dating has the danger of losing a friend.

A double date usually occurs after one party from each of the couples establish a friendship. This friendship is now on the line at this “first date” as the friends involve their ever important significant others, their opinion carrying enormous weight.

It can be especially hard for me as I have a tendency to get along better with men than women due to my geekier interests. If a guy friend’s girlfriend/wife does not like me, the gender difference becomes an obvious, awkward wall that makes them uncomfortable with me, which I never want to do to them.

Luckily, I’ve had more success than failure over the past few years, and have two particular couples that I can call out as folks Trevor and I “date”. (Even after writing out this whole post, phrasing it that way feels super weird, but accurate.)

One couple, Trevor and I have now known for years now and are comfy with. We are neighbours and we hang out on random week nights and lazy weekends, watching random things on Netflix, playing with their adorable kids, or (more recently) blowing through the entire first season of Game of Thrones. (It’s super dark and depressing, and totally worth it.) I wear puffy Yoshi slippers and pj pants when I wander over to their house.

The other couple is a more recent development; we’ve got a standing Saturday morning brunch date, often involving biscuits from Tom Douglas’s Serious Biscuit restaurant in Seattle. When I get ready to go, I still feel the need to change out of my stained Calvin and Hobbes tee I wore to bed the night before and make myself socially presentable.

See? Dating.

Brunch is such a glorious thing. Weekly brunch makes me fat. Fat and sassy. A most acceptable situation. The problem with a standing brunch date? The week one of you needs to miss, there is serious carb withdrawal.

This past Saturday was brunch free, so I knew what I had to do on Sunday.

Maple bacon biscuits, topped with a sweet maple glaze.

How could I not?

Recipe from A Cozy Kitchen

Biscuits

• 5-6 slices of bacon
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 sticks of very cold butter (or 6 ounces), cubed
• 1/2 cup cold and shaken buttermilk
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1 egg, beaten with a tablespoon of milk or water (egg wash)

Maple Glaze

• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. Biscuits: Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C).
2. Cook bacon using your favourite method. Chop it up into about 1/2-inch pieces, let cool and set aside.(I bake it they way A Cozy Kitchen does: “To bake, preheat the oven to 400F, line a baking sheet with parchment. Next, place the bacon side-by-side and stick it in the oven for 15-20 minutes, or until crispy. Drain the bacon on paper towels to expel excess grease.”)
3. In a large bowl, mix together the all-purpose flour, baking powder and salt. Working quickly, add the cubed butter and break it up with your hands until all of the butter is broken into bits and resembles small peas.
4. Gently stir in cooled bacon. Form a well in the center of the mixture.
5. In a measuring cup, whisk together the buttermilk and egg. Add the buttermilk mixture and maple syrup into the well of the flour mixture. Mix until barely combined.
6. Lightly dust your kitchen counter with flour and dump the dough onto it. Knead a few times (maybe 4 or 5) until the dough comes together. Press or gently roll the dough into a 1-inch thickness. Cut out biscuits using a 2.5-inch cutter and place on lined baking sheet. Re-roll dough scraps to get a few more biscuits. Brush the tops of the biscuits with egg wash and bake in oven for 15-20 minutes, or until tall and golden brown.
7. Glaze: Add all of the ingredients to a small bowl and whisk until completely combined.
8. Serve biscuits warm with glaze poured atop.

Makes approx. a dozen biscuits.