Jam Banana Biscuit Puffs

I'm not sure whether this is a breakfast, a dessert, or just a fun snack. Well, whatever it is, we ate it for dinner tonight. Sometimes you just gotta indulge and have a little fun.

The inspiration for the idea for what became this dish was Michelle's Cheesy Chicken Cups, found on her blog Fabulous Food! Although my finished product in no way resembles Michelle's cups, you should check out her recipe anyway, because her chicken cups look so tasty! I liked the idea of biscuit cups, but I couldn't think of anything to fill them with that wouldn't require much work (I've been feeling lazy in the food department today). I decided to go ahead and start making some biscuits anyway, and hope that I could come up with something before it was time to start eating them!

Somewhere between the computer and the kitchen, the idea of a sweet biscuit entered my mind. I liked the idea, and built this dish up from there.

Jam Banana Biscuit Puffs
2 cups flour
2 tbsp. sugar
1 tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1/2 cup shortening
1 small banana, cut into small chunks
3/4 cup milk
Extra flour as needed
Jam

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Cut in shortening until the mixture resembles crumbs. Stir in the chunks of banana, then add milk and stir well. For some reason, my dough was much wetter than it usually is when I make biscuits, so I sprinkled in a little extra flour.

Turn dough out onto floured surface and knead about ten times (I needed more flour for this as well - my dough was still really wet). Divide into twelve pieces.

Press each piece into lightly greased muffin tin, forming a cup shape. I intended for this recipe to be jam-filled biscuit cups. However, they puffed up far too much during baking, and weren't cup-shaped at all. I don't know how they would form if you just pressed the dough in without forming a cup.

Spoon about 1-2 tsp. jam (I used apricot) into each cup of dough. Bake at 400 until biscuits are golden brown. At this point, I pretty much needed to take the biscuit puffs out because this biscuit's jam had overflowed and left a nice little present for me on the bottom of my oven.










Remove from muffin tin and set on wire rack to cool. But don't cool them too much - these were delicious to eat warm!


The biscuits had a delicious, lightly-sweet flavor, and were definitely "puffy" and light. The banana chunks added a nice touch, and the jam completed the ensemble.


I would definitely make these again. Next time, however, I might think about reducing the milk so the biscuit dough wouldn't be so wet, and I think I will try sandwiching the jam inside the biscuit so there's no chance of spillover. Although, doing that would eliminate the beautiful glazed look that these puffs had.