For Flaky, Oozy Stuffed Biscuits, Just Use Store-Bought Dough

In Cheap Tricks we’ll help you make the most out of everyday supermarket staples. Today, the easiest route to stuffed biscuits.

There are some recipes I develop from a place of intellectual curiosity, through a rigorous series of empirical experiments. I tweak and I measure, I note and I weigh.

And there are some recipes I develop by accident, when I am a little bit drunk and rooting around in the fridge. I’ll let you guess which route I took to come up with these “25-minute stuffed biscuits.”

The truly magical thing about this recipe is that it actually works best with the store-bought stuff, due to the factory-uniform distribution of fat throughout clearly defined dough layers that always rise to their full potential. They are all flaky outsides and molten centers, dough swaddling a hidden delight.

The concept of stuffing something delicious into a carb is, of course, in no way novel. Neither is the idea of stuffing something delicious into a buttery, golden-brown biscuit. My 25-minute boys are a close cousin of the kolache, the jelly donut, the hand pie, and others, to be sure. And, like their kin, they are absolutely delicious.

So, grab a can of your favorite biscuit dough (I like to use Pillsbury Grands); and get ready to reap the rewards of your (very low) efforts.

Here’s how to make stuffed biscuits:

First, get prepared

Heat an oven to 350° F, or an air fryer to 320° F. Lightly grease a high-sided baking pan—one that’s big enough to fit all of your biscuits (a 13×9″ baking pan, which fits 8 biscuits with some room to spare, is ideal)—or the basket of your air fryer with vegetable oil.

Then, make your filling. Here’s where you’ll have to choose: sweet or savory. For sweet stuffed biscuits, I recommend cream cheese and jam. Strawberry, guava, and raspberry work well. You could also experiment with all sorts of other fillings, like ube halaya, or honey and nut butter. For a savory take, my go to is cream cheese and finely chopped scallion, chives, or a mix of the two. Swap in labne or Greek yogurt for the cream cheese, any herb or caramelized allium for the scallion, and/or even a few crushed-up Ruffles. Live your life!

In a bowl, add equal parts of the chosen filling ingredients—such as a 1:1 ratio of cream cheese to jam or cream cheese to scallions—and swirl together.

Stuff the biscuits

Use one canister of pre-shaped biscuits. Remove the biscuits from the container and use your thumbs to gently create a pocket between the layers in the center of each biscuit, careful not to rip all the way through. You want to leave the back seam of the biscuit intact. When you’ve created the pocket, the raw biscuit will look like an open mouth screaming at you for not using a coaster.

Into each biscuit pocket, spoon about 2 heaping tsp. of filling as deep as you can get them without tearing the back seam. Repeat with remaining biscuits.