Southern Style Biscuits with Sweet Maple Sausage Gravy

For the biscuits:

Preheat oven to 375 F. Line a baking sheet with a silicone mat or parchment paper and set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together all of the dry biscuit ingredients (flour through sugar on the above list). Set aside.

In a liquid measuring cup stir together all of the wet ingredients (all of the remaining biscuit ingredients, except for the butter). Set aside.

Grate 6 tablespoons of the frozen butter using a cheese grater. Place the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter into a small bowl. Pour the grated butter into the dry ingredients and stir to coat. Pour in the wet ingredients all at once and stir for 3 or 4 strokes, just to start incorporating everything together. Pour biscuit dough onto a well floured board. Start moving dough around so it doesn’t stick and begin folding the dough in half over itself to create layers of dough. Do this 4 or 5 times, sprinkling more flour where needed. Roll dough out to about 1 inch thick and cut into 2-3 inch biscuits. You should get approximately 8 biscuits.

Place the biscuits on the prepared baking sheet and bake in the preheated oven for 12 minutes. While biscuits are baking, melt remaining 2 tablespoons of butter. After the 12 minutes are up, remove biscuits from oven, brush the tops with melted butter and finish baking another 3-5 minutes, or until the tops are golden.

For the gravy:

Saute the pureed onion and breakfast sausage in a large skillet over medium heat with the olive oil until meat has browned completely. As the meat cooks, be sure to break it apart into smaller pieces. Sprinkle in flour and cayenne pepper. Stir to moisten flour and cook 1 minute. Pour in milk and half-and-half. After a minute or two, gravy should start to thicken. Once it has thickened remove from heat, stir in maple syrup and salt and pepper to taste.

To serve, split open the warm biscuit and top with hot gravy.

Recipe Notes: Be sure to use a breakfast sausage you love! That is mostly what the gravy will taste like, so be sure to find a good brand. Also, this gravy is meant to be sweet. If you don’t think you’d like the maple syrup addition, feel free to reduce the amount by half or omit it completely from this recipe.