BUTTER
50g/⅔ cup coffee beans
400ml/1¾ cups double/heavy cream
100ml/scant ½ cup milk
A pinch of flaky sea salt
BISCUITS
125g/½ cup cold butter, cubed
340g/scant 2 cups plain/all-purpose flour
5g/1tsp fine salt
20g/2tbsp baking powder
300ml/1¼ cups buttermilk*
30g/2tbsp butter, melted
EQUIPMENT
A piece of muslin/cheesecloth, or a clean dishcoth
Food processor
* You should have this leftover from making the butter; add additional buttermilk, or a couple of spoonfuls of yoghurt if you need more.
Shug Avery, ill in bed in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, is offered anything she wants for breakfast – ham, grits, biscuits, coffee, buttermilk, jam – but asks only for coffee. Celie sits beside her, ‘lavishing’ butter on a hot biscuit. The two women are yet to enter into the relationship that will change Celie’s life, but it’s a memorable breakfast nonetheless. It’s a moment of calm, and an olive branch in the form of the biscuits that Shug falls upon as soon as Celie leaves the room.
Serves 4
1. To make the butter, put the coffee beans in a food processor and blitz for a second or two, to break them up a bit without turning them to a powder. Pour them into a bowl, add the cream, cover, and store in the fridge for 24 hours.
2. The next day, sieve the cream, leaving the beans behind. Pour the milk over the beans to loosen any stubborn cream, collecting this in the same bowl as the cream. Beat the milk and cream with an electric whisk or mixer, past stiff peaks, until the fat and liquid separate, and you are left with a clump of butter on the whisk, and buttermilk in the bowl.
3. Place a sieve lined with a clean piece of muslin over a bowl, and pour the buttermilk through it, collecting any small clumps of butter. Add the butter from the whisk, then mix through a pinch of flaky salt, and squeeze the muslin until it has stopped releasing buttermilk. Set the butter aside, and retain the buttermilk.
4. For the biscuits, preheat the oven to 220C fan/475F/gas 9. In a bowl, rub the cold butter (not the fancy coffee stuff, just the regular stuff) into the flour, salt, and baking powder with your fingertips, stopping just before everything is incorporated so the mixture still has flattened bits of butter running through it. Place in the freezer for 15 minutes.
5. Use a fork to mix the buttermilk into the flour and butter, working quickly to bring the dough together. Flour your work surface, then roll the dough out into a rough rectangle. Fold this up like an A4 letter – a third over the middle third, and then the other third over the top. Turn the dough 90 degrees, roll out a little, and repeat the letter fold in the other direction.
6. Roll the dough out so it is an inch thick, then flour a fluted biscuit cutter (or a glass), and cut into 8 rounds, reshaping any offcuts and cutting through them again.
7. Place onto a lined baking sheet, brush the tops with melted butter, and bake for 12 minutes, until golden and well risen. Serve immediately with the coffee butter.