These savory little shortbread cookies will taunt you until you have eaten every last one – I’ll warn you now! I had to make batch after batch of these because I “forgot” to take a photo, and next thing I knew, they were all gone.
I first set out on the path to make plain cheddar cookies, then I added rosemary to the next batch…and they were all delicious. Then I knew what would make them amazing – BACON. We all know the power of bacon.
You can use cheddar cheese alone, or mix it up with some Monterey Jack, Gouda, or Parmesan (etc.). Also, if you are not on a gluten-free or grain-free diet, feel free to use whatever flour you normally use for baking.
So, I present to you Cheddar Bacon Biscuits. Eat them with soup, eat them with a salad, eat them as a quick snack. It’s all good!
Ingredients:
- 8 ounces of cheese, grated (About 2 cups, packed)
- 1 3/4 cup almond flour
- 1/4 cup arrowroot starch/flour
- 1 teaspoon mustard powder
- 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon hot, smoked Spanish paprika
- 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- 4 tablespoons butter, at room temperature (+more if needed)
- 4 strips of bacon, cooked crisp and chopped fine
In a large bowl, mix together the flours, mustard powder, cayenne pepper, paprika, and salt. Add the cheese and toss until mixed well. Cut the butter into small pieces (or grate) and add to the bowl along with the bacon.
Using your hands, mix the ingredients together to form a homogeneous dough. This will take a few minutes. It helps to first “rub” the butter into the other ingredients between your fingers, then start kneading and folding it over until it is well mixed and it forms a large ball. If you have trouble getting the ingredients to form a dough after kneading, add more butter, 1 T at a time, until dough is formed.
Roll the dough into a log approximately 12-inches long. I found it easiest to do this on a piece of parchment paper. After the log is formed, roll it up in the paper and smooth it down until it is a uniform cylinder-shape. Place the roll of dough in the refrigerator for at least one hour.
When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350F and line a baking sheet with a silicone sheet or parchment paper. Remove the dough from the parchment paper, and slice into ~1/2-inch slices. Place on the baking sheets, separated by at least an inch. Bake for around 20 minutes until the edges start to brown.
Remove from oven and allow to cool before removing from the pan (or they will break). Once they are cool, the cookies are relatively fragile, but they will stay together. Enjoy!
Yum! What’s not to love…cheese and bacon? Gimmie! And gimmie some new music! Such as Sunday Morning Record from The Band of Heathens. For fans of Gram Parsons, Tom Petty and such, BOH are soulful and offer great harmonies, killer songwriting and a sound that pulls you in each time you visit. Great stuff!
Now some new music that isn’t really old. Phantom Train by The Bongos is the 
great, “lost” Bongos album recorded in the mid-’80s and left on a shelf until now. It’s full of The Bongos unique “new wave” sound, drawing largely on the songs of Richard Barone (including a few that would show up on Cool Blue Halo, Barone’s live masterpiece from 1987.) Sleek, hooky and driving, this is a welcome blast from the past.
she cooks...he cleans 
Your biscuits look AMAZING…THE crispy-crunchy texture in the image (and the hue!!) have place these beauties on my MUST list to go with my various autumn tomato, winter squash….and carrot soups!!!
Bolting out the door TOMORROW…in search of that HIGHLY interesting musical selection…I LOVED Gram Parsons….and this looks totally up my alley…..I think your blog has the BEST taste….food & music categories combined!!!!
Donna, sorry to let your comment slip by me! I hope you got a chance to make the biscuits and liked them. This household is big on Gram Parsons – we even took a special vacation to Joshua Tree National Park in his honor, and stayed at the infamous Joshua Tree Inn.
We think you have AMAZINGLY good taste too! 🙂
Is it possible to make more of the dough and just freeze a part of it for later use? I know generally this can be done with doughs that need to be refrigerated before use. It would be really helpful for days when you just don’t have enough time.
I think that freezing it would be okay, and also I think it would keep well refrigerated for at least a week, if wrapped up well to prevent it from drying out. If you try it, let us know!
i know jacob would definitely love these! and maybe if i loved him enough i would make these for him. 😛
Haha! Maybe one day… 😉
Those look great and just in time to go with hearty Fall stews. Any idea if I could sub cornstarch for arrowroot?
You most definitely can use cornstarch instead of arrowroot, Dave. Thanks!
These look amazing- I wish I saw this a few hours ago for my chili tonight. Thanks for the recipe!
I just made these babies for a potluck this afternoon- is the amount of butter a typo? I only ask because I needed 4x as much (1 cup) to make it into a dough. I checked comparable recipes (cheese+bacon shortbread/biscuits) and all had a 1:2 butter:flour ratio. Thanks for the idea!
Hi Chloe – In my earlier attempts at these biscuits, I used more butter and found that they spread out too much when I baked them, so I ended up losing some of the butter to shape up the biscuit. I did a quick google and indeed, the first recipe I saw (Mark Bittman’s) uses 8 tablespoons of butter with the same amount of cheese and a little less flour. I guess the amount of butter that will work is fairly lenient! There was a lot of kneading/elbow grease involved to get the dough to work, so I will try more butter next time! Thanks for your comments!
I just modified the recipe for more butter, as needed. 🙂
This recipe is wonderful. I cut the recipe in half and rolled the log out to about 6 inches — it made 10 small biscuits.The only cheddar I had on hand was VERY SHARP; I combined it with a milder Mexican cheese blend, plus, for good measure, a small amount of blue cheese and parmesan (about 1 tablespoon each), to equal one scant cup. Added about a teaspoon of the bacon grease in with the butter, and a small amount of onion powder. So far, it is absolutely the best — by far –grain free biscuit/bread/muffin recipe I’ve tried. So glad to have found these. Thank you!
That sounds like a fantastic mix of cheeses! Thanks for new ideas. 🙂
Holy crap these were amazing!!! I used both sharp cheddar and parmesan and added in some chopped jalapeños (along with the bacon of course) for an extra kick. DELICIOUS!
Forgot to add that I used tapioca flour instead of the arrowroot, generally these two can sub in for each other without issue.
Good point! I ran out of arrowroot months ago and have been using tapioca for most things. Potato starch might also work in these little biscuits since they are savory. Cornstarch would work for people that prefer that.