sea salted buttermilk biscuits stuffed w/ chocolate

Years ago when I lived in Washington, DC for a stint there was this place called Bread & Chocolate. When I first saw the sign I thought now there's a great concept: bread and chocolate, how fabulous is that? And I literally thought they sold bread with chocolate in some sort of manner; curious of course to see how and which way they did it; also thinking this is a great fondue idea too. But no they just sold regular bakery goods and fresh french bread. Very dissapointing. In all my food travels, meeting other foodies, I've learned from others that bread, salt and chocolate do pair very well together and I've seen it done many ways. My favorite being a sourdough french toast stuffed with milk chocolate. (I need to recreate that at home). But for now here is my take on three of my favorite ingredients: buttermilk biscuits, Scharffen Berger chocolate and sea salt. Seriously this combo is incredible, especially when they are just warm, fresh out of the oven.

One could make this a fancy dessert by adding fresh chopped strawberries and freshly whipped cream. Delightful.

Sea salted buttermilk biscuits stuffed w/ milk chocolate
biscuit recipe loosely adapted from Cook's Illustrated
print recipe

2 cups flour
1 TB baking powder
1 TB sugar
1 ts salt
½ ts baking soda
5 TB unsalted butter, grated
1 ½ cup buttermilk
1-inch of 2-inch chunks of high quality milk chocolate
Additional flour
2 TB melted butter
Pinches of sea salt for lightly dusting the tops

A small bowl with ¼ cup of flour, set aside (used for your hands when touching the flour)
Grate your 5 TB of butter with a cheese grater or food processor, place back in freezer till ready to use.
Preheat oven to 500ºF. Spray a jellyroll pan with nonstick spray and/or parchment paper.
Get your additional 2 TB of melted butter ready to go.

In a large bowl mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar and salt.
Using a fork or pastry blender, mix the butter until you have small little crumbles.
Next fold in the buttermilk until everything is just blended, and there are no streaks of flour remain.
Do not overmix, the mixture should still be fairly lumpy—lumpy is good!
These next parts you need to work fairly fast as we want to keep the dough nice and chilled and not work it too much. Coat your hands with flour and using a spoon scoop out about an 1/8 of a cup of dough. Form into a bottom half of a biscuit, place in a chunk of chocolate; don’t let the chocolate touch the edges. Then scoop out another 1/8 of a cup of dough and place on top. Pinch the two halves together, so the biscuit is nice and sealed up. Flour up your hands again and repeat.
Place the dough balls into the prepared cookie sheet. Brush the tops of the biscuits with melted butter, then dust them with the sea salt (light coating of sea salt).
Bake for 5 minutes at 500ºF (middle rack) and then lower the temperature to 450ºF and bake for another 10 to 15 minutes. (cooks Illustrated says 15 but I'm telling you to watch them at the 10 minute mark).
Should make about 10 – 12; depending on size you make your biscuits.