Cream Biscuits with British Double Cream

Source: Chef John — Allrecipes, King Arthur ingredient weights

Tags: biscuits, baking, vegetarian, quick

Ingredients

Steps

  1. Heat the oven to 260°C conventional (240°C fan). Line a baking tray with foil.
  2. Combine flour, sugar and salt, then stir in the cold cream. If crumbly, add cold water a teaspoon at a time until soft and slightly sticky; stop mixing as soon as combined.
  3. On a floured surface, flatten and fold in thirds. Pat to 1.25 cm thick; cut roughly 7.5 cm rounds, gently gathering scraps for further biscuits.
  4. Bake until golden and set in the centre, checking at 12 minutes and continuing as needed; the first batch was a little underdone after 10 minutes. Serve warm.

Notes

Makes approximately 8 American-style biscuits; the serving control counts individual biscuits.

31 October 2026 batch feedback: 180 g flour was too much with 300 ml British double cream. Reduce the recipe to 160 g flour provisionally. Baked for 10 minutes; internal temperature was 200–205°F (approximately 93–96°C). The biscuits were a little underdone, so allow longer next time rather than relying on that internal temperature alone. Salt was accidentally omitted and they definitely needed it; keep the listed 1/2 tsp salt. For the next batch, omit butter entirely and reduce sugar to 5 g. The 160 g flour adjustment has not yet been bake-tested.

Original conversion: King Arthur lists self-rising flour at 113 g per cup. Using a US cup of approximately 237 ml, the scale factor for 300 ml cream is 300 / (1.5 × 237), approximately 0.844. The initial calculated flour quantity was 2 × 113 × 0.844 = 191 g, rounded to 190 g; the ingredient list now uses 160 g following the mixing feedback above. Sugar is now reduced to 5 g following batch feedback, and butter has been removed. This conversion uses the self-rising flour entry, rather than the 120 g plain/all-purpose flour entry.

British ingredients: British self-raising flour generally has no added salt, unlike US self-rising flour; the salt here compensates for that. Omit it if using salted US self-rising flour. See Dr. Oetker's explanation.

Double cream adjustment: British double cream is about 48% fat (Nigella), so this will be a richer adaptation, not an exact equivalent of the original heavy-cream version. The optional water is a practical dough-consistency adjustment: start without it and add only if needed. See the batch feedback above for the first bake; the revised 160 g flour quantity remains untested.