Nothing feels more like a Sunday afternoon than jalapeño poppers. Whether it be a game day at a friend’s house or served as an appetizer while going out to the local haunt, there’s magic in this pepper, cream cheese, and bacon trifecta. Something about this appetizer that requires you to slow your pace and possibly watch the television for an hour or two. It forces you to stop the bustle of doing and going, maybe we need to prescribe it to treat life stresses. Either way, when this solid standby appetizer can be transformed into a carby, bready format, I’m all ears. This recipe for Jalapeño Popper Biscuits has all of the flavors of the appetizer but in a fluffy melt-in-your-mouth biscuit form.

Jalapeño Popper Biscuits may sound like a lot of work, but the recipe is actually quite simple to make. The components of a biscuit are easy to come by — cake flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, butter, and buttermilk.

The hardest (not really hard) thing is preparing the biscuit mix-ins. Small diced jalapeños should be deseeded (at least a little bit, you don’t want to burn peoples’ mouths!), cream cheese needs to be cubed and chilled, and bacon needs to be fried and chopped (make extra in case you eat some bacon in the process). You may be thinking — why chill the cream cheese? This short stint in the freezer helps the cream cheese keep its distinct shape and prevents the cream cheese from dissolving into the biscuit batter.

After prepping your mix-ins, tackle your biscuit dough. The cake flour in this recipe isn’t a typo, these biscuits need cake flour! Cake flour is a great base for biscuits, which need as much levity as they can get. The cake flour provides a tender, delicate crumb and doesn’t create a heavy and leaden texture. A pinch of sugar does two big things: it highlights the natural sweetness of the buttermilk and butter as well as countering the strong flavors of the mix-ins.

Once you cut your butter into the dry ingredients, go ahead, and drizzle in the buttermilk. The dough will be sticky! Make sure to really scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl to incorporate all of the ingredients.

Fold in three-fourths of the mix-ins, reserving the remaining fourth for the top of the biscuits.

Use an ice cream scoop or a big soup spoon to portion out the dough onto parchment-lined baking sheets.

Garnish the tops of the biscuits with the remaining mix-ins, this gives the biscuits a distinct appearance and lets you know the contents of the biscuits.

These biscuits only need a brief stint in a hot oven to get a fluffy and tender texture.

Jalapeño Popper Biscuits are a great combination of cream, salt, and heat. The cubes of cream cheese are smooth and rich, the jalapeños still have some bite and plenty of heat, and the bacon bits have a crisp texture with a satisfying, salty bite.

Having a taste of these biscuits, you’ll have to pause in the best possible way. They’re so light and airy that you might pop them in your mouth one after another! The biscuits might need a warning label, they’re that good.

The mix-ins that a good biscuit and turn it into an outstanding biscuit. Jalapeño Popper Biscuits can stand alone without the assistance of butter or a spread but make great companions to soups and stews.

Try them out for yourself, you’ll be wishing you had this recipe sooner!