How to Make Erika Council's Butter Swim Biscuits Recipe

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The Southern baker shares her famous recipe.

Welcome to The Pioneer Woman Cookbook Club! This month, we're featuring Southern biscuit baker Erika Council's first-ever cookbook Still We Rise: A Love Letter to the Southern Biscuit with Over 70 Sweet and Savory Recipes. Keep reading to discover how Erika's life-long biscuit obsession began and how to make the easiest buttermilk biscuits that defy all rules.

Flour and butter were practically running through Erika Council's veins the second she took her first breath. She grew up in North Carolina surrounded by culinary marvels: Mildred Edna Cotton Council, Erika's paternal grandmother, owned and operated Mama Dip's Kitchen, a renowned soul food restaurant in Chapel Hill. Her maternal grandmother Geraldine Dortch, an educator whom she and everyone else in town called Granny, was a spectacular home cook who organized bake sales to support the Civil Rights movement. At an early age, Erika observed that the women who made the best biscuits were admired most in their respective communities, and she was determined to follow suit. "I knew that I wanted to be revered just like that when I got older," Erika says.

The first time she made biscuits from scratch, Erika was younger than 10 years old and it was a tremendous disaster. She cut so much butter and shortening into the flour, the biscuit dough boiled over in the bottom of her Granny's oven, sending the smoke alarm into a frenzy. However, Erika wasn't one to give up so easily. Biscuits became somewhat of her obsession, as she spent years, even decades, learning how to roll, cut, and stack dough to achieve fluffy, flaky biscuits that could rival her grandmother's. Now, one taste of the more than 70 recipes found in her premier cookbook and it's hard to believe anyone has ever baked a better-tasting biscuit.

Through her blog Southern Souffle and popups, Erika found equally biscuit-obsessed fans in her current home, Atlanta, and officially plunged into the biscuit business a few years back. Tucked into a historic neighborhood, Erika's Bomb Biscuit Company is praised for its, well, bomb biscuits! Erika's favorite? A good ol' classic buttermilk. It's the hallmark of her business and a darn good Southern tradition. But when writing her first-ever cookbook, Erika had no plans to stick to tradition.

For as long as she could remember, African American women had been cut out of culinary scene, so in Still We Rise, Erika anchors her flawless biscuit recipes with sincere, and sometimes witty, stories of the characters who've shaped her life. "I wanted to be able to tell the story of how I got here and the people who encouraged me along the way," she says. From her beloved family members to those inspirations Erika never actually met, Still We Rise weaves a story that is just as rich as her biscuits. She tells the tale of Cleora Butler, a remarkable Black chef and cookbook author whose book, Cleora's Kitchens, was the first cookbook Erika ever owned. She describes the meals she enjoyed in church fellowship halls growing up and recalls the stories of her great-grandmother "Big Mama" and the biscuits, pies, and cakes that she could bake better than anyone. Following in the footsteps of so many women before her, it's easy to realize that Erika is leaving her mark on her own community.

A recipe Erika calls the "anti-biscuit," her butter swim biscuits defy every rule of classic biscuit baking. You can start with room temperature buttermilk. There's no rolling and layering and cutting. There isn't even any butter mixed into the dough; rather it's poured over top. And yet, still they rise into some of the best biscuits you'll ever sink your teeth into. "It just has this sort of flaky, crispy crust along the top and bottom, and on the inside it's just this buttery flakiness that you would never expect," she says. For a first-time baker, they're approachable and foolproof. From these easy biscuits to more classic cut versions to her widely beloved apple butter recipe, this keepsake book is sure to spark a love of biscuits almost as strong as Erika's.

unsalted butter

all-purpose flour

kosher salt

baking powder

sugar

full-fat buttermilk, room temperature

Reprinted with permission from Still We Rise by Erika Council, copyright © 2023. Published by Clarkson Potter, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC.

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