Grandaddy's Cheese-Center Biscuits

or: reverse-engineering my childhood

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my grandparents, Wirt and Betty Jean, in the early 1950s

This is a story about biscuits. It is about childhood too, and nostalgia, and going through ambiguous times as a grown up, and about people you miss as they drop away with age, and about how I never buy baking mixes. But mostly, it’s a story about biscuits.

My Grandaddy and Grandmama lived in a quiet little house in the back of a quiet neighborhood, where approximately nothing happened. Their home was refreshingly consistent my whole childhood: nothing moved from its dedicated place for decades. It was a well-ordered microcosm, filled with grown-up things without feeling like a museum. The scent of it was consistent too, smelling alternately of meatloaf or pot roast, mashed potatoes, brown-and-serve rolls, or (if not mealtime) that dim, somewhat-damp smell that belongs to many old homes. The dampness welled up from Grandmama’s sewing room off the kitchen, which had once been a sun room and was now haunted by costumes-in-progress for her old ballet studio, and the local NPR station.

Pictures of my mother and uncles in various stages of teenage-hood stood in their usual places on the untuned upright piano. A copy of Juan Giralt Lerin’s “Spanish Dance” hung on the wall above the sofa, its shades of poppy red, persimmon, and sage echoed in the pinstripe cushions below. A stuffed pheasant Grandaddy shot at some distant point in his “banking days” swooped from the top of a china cabinet in their never-used dining room, and I knew that under another portrait in the hall near his mysterious office could be found a hand-cranked coffee grinder (also never used). The cake-stand above the microwave would always hold a two-layer yellow cake with chocolate frosting, the fridge always held a pitcher of pink lemonade for a Tom & Jerry glass, and a sleeve of Ritz crackers forever stood next to a pad of paper on the table; it contained either Grandmama’s latest Scrabble score, or the start of a grocery list. If we came for dinner we could count on a bowl of vanilla ice cream with Hershey’s chocolate syrup poured from a can. After ice cream we raced back to the living room over the beaten green carpet - our feet making soft hisses over the worn nap - to claim the best recliner in front of the TV. And each April the neighborhood azaleas bloomed.

In my memories the azaleas are ever-present, though they only bloomed once a year. Like du Marier’s rhododendrons in Rebecca (one of Grandmama’s favorite authors), these azaleas gave a personality to their home. They were vivid and shade-loving, promising years and years of blooms to come. Tall oak trees, a dogwood or two, crushed acorns under the heel, moss pushing between sparse grass, and always the pink, red, purple, pastel azaleas blooming. A simple, cozy, reliable place to be our second home, and I loved it.

“Spanish Dance” by Juan Giralt Lerin - the most beautiful.

Into this, enter sleepovers. These were funny because we slept over two at a time, tucked up in the spare queen bed and saw a side of our grandparents that was hitherto unseen: Grandaddy in pajamas, Grandmama reading late at night in her chair, both of them sleeping in separate bedrooms which never bothered us too much. We knew Grandaddy went to sleep early, while she stayed up late watching ballets on television in her room. And anyway, she let the cat sleep on the bed.

In the mornings, it was always Grandaddy who was up first. Grandmama would not be awake yet - she kept theatre hours and seldom emerged before nine. If we were up very early with him, we could catch a bowl of Apple Jacks before proper breakfast. If not, we would awaken to the delicious smell of paper-thin bacon, scrambled eggs, and his famous cheese biscuits luring us into the strangely-sunny living room and through it to the linoleum kitchen with its duct-taped seam running straight down the center. I don’t think I’ve ever been hungrier than I was on these mornings.

Before we proceed: I need you to understand what I mean by “cheese biscuits.” I do not mean biscuit dough into which cheese has been grated. I mean Bisquik drop biscuits somewhat thickened with a little less milk or a little more mix, then wrapped around hunks of sharp cheddar cheese. He’d then bake them on a dusted sheet-tray till they look like tennis-ball sized, toasted snowballs. They were tossed into the penguin bowl and covered with its tin lid. (I frequently find these at thrift and antique shops, and you can buy one here! Apparently everybody in the 1950s had one.) When the rest of breakfast was ready, they were to be eaten with butter and clear amber apple jelly, or apple butter if you weren’t so pedestrian. These were my concept of cheese biscuits well into my teen years, and they were another unchanged factor. I can’t recall ever having a different breakfast any of the times I slept over.

And then we grew up. And Grandaddy retired, and Grandmama got sick, and eventually the house was renovated and finally, when Grandmama died in 2018, the house was sold and they moved away from Lynnwood Drive forever. But of course, things were different long before that.

This is the color I remember as her signature, maybe because of this photo. <3

Life gets complicated when you’re grown up, and lately I have been feeling that complexity. I am in a stage of a million different changes while simultaneously feeling becalmed. I am waiting for big things and small things. I am doing big things and small things. I am hoping I calculated well, and am remembering that I’m poor at math. I’m missing my Grandmama as I especially do this time of year between when we lost her, and her birthday. The azaleas are blooming.

Somewhere in all of this, I began to think about those cheese biscuits.

After work one day, I texted my Grandaddy (ninety-two years old, living at my parent’s house now, very tech-savvy) to ask him if he remembered how he made those biscuits. He is my only living grandparent, and I love that we can still chit-chat about the old times. Rather than texting me back, Grandaddy called me to run me through the instructions for making his cheese biscuits. When I answered the phone, he faked laryngitis which is a sure sign that he is still in fine fettle. You will never meet a bigger jokester. I am thankful his mind is still so sharp. It is a gift to have more time.

Grandaddy was very invested in the idea of me baking these biscuits for Andrew, and followed up via text several weeks later to ask if I’d made them yet. The first time he tasted them, he said, was eighty-four years ago in Roper, NC when his grandmother baked them for him. And where did she learn to make them this way, I wonder?

the biscuits, unbaked

the biscuits, baked

When I got off the phone, tears welled close to the surface. I asked for his biscuit recipe, but I knew that I was really asking for something different. That I was asking for a short reprieve from living as an adult in a long season of ambiguity. Could we go back, just once, to have one more childhood sleepover? One more span of hours to spend with both of my grandparents there in the house that never changed, tucked away behind a riot of azaleas, eating a predictable cheese biscuit breakfast and knowing that they would both live forever (naturally) because they just had to?

I could use a little of that. It might be the time in my own life that I would most like to live over again, just to enjoy it exactly as it was. (Is there any type of relationship less complicated than that of a beloved grandparent to grandchild?) And I know that life is very good now, but man, it was really good then. And of course, the thing that would most quickly make everything currently going on in life much better would be a conversation with my Grandmama over a mug of tea. I just miss her. I have written those words a lot of times in this post and it won’t mean anything to you because you didn’t know her, but she was a supreme human.

I drove by their old house recently. The azaleas were blooming and it scared me a little how easily my heart felt at home on that street, as if it really hasn’t been so long since I belonged there, and could go there, and loved people there. But of course everything was different and a minivan parked on their half-moon drive, and the house paint was a different color and it was all wrong. There is a sense of loss with any attempt to revisit old places. Even if it is intriguing, it comes with unfeeling abruptness, like the place has moved on to a new life with little regard for your personal memories, which it has. But I have also practiced safe magic by performing little time-travel spells in the kitchen. We can conjure a bit of the old times; food has that effect. Recipes are a time machine.

I made the cheese biscuits this weekend, stood in line at the grocery store feeling the need to explain why I had Bisquik in my cart (a pre-packaged mix? The horror!). I mixed it up just the way Grandaddy told me to, and wrapped the shaggy dough around torn off chunks of sharp cheddar cheese. While they baked, I popped open my last jar of homemade apple butter to get ready. When the biscuits came out of the oven, one oozed a teardrop of melted cheese and that itself was a vivid memory - they looked just right, just the way they did in 1998.

Each step of the process bought back details I had forgotten (like how the trays are dusted with Bisquik), or the macaroon-looking surface of the biscuit, or the way they taste when you bite into that deep pool of cheese spilling over the fluffy sides. I don’t want to steer you wrong: in the end of it all this is a Bisquik drop biscuit with a melty cheese center. It is not rock science. They are not the most delicious biscuit you’ll ever meet. But they really are special.

Grandmama’s birthday is this week. It felt like a good time to share this story, and of course the recipe. And if you make them and share that fact with me, I’ll be sure to tell my Grandaddy. He would love to know. He likes that sort of thing.

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just like I remember. :)

Grandaddy’s Cheese-Center Biscuits

makes 6-8 large biscuits

3 cups biscuit baking mix (plus more as needed)

1 cup milk

1.5 tablespoons vegetable oil

4 ounces sharp cheddar torn into app. 1/2” chunks (does not have to be exact)

apple jelly or apple butter to serve

1. In a large mixing bowl, mix together the biscuit mix, milk, and vegetable oil. If the dough looks very sticky, sprinkle in a little bit more biscuit mix till workable.

2. Working with your hands, scoop a large chunk of biscuit dough into your palm and into its center, push one chunk of the cheddar cheese. Wrap the dough around the cheese to seal any holes completely, then place a couple inches apart on a dusted baking tray.

3. Bake at 450 degrees F. for 8-10 minutes until looking slightly golden/toasted on top. Remove from oven, allow to cool slightly, then serve with butter and preserves of choice!