Growing up in Virginia, I ate my share of biscuits, but never took seconds unless they contained cheese. My New England friends can’t quite cotton to a salty, savory combination of cheese, flour, and butter. They expect my homemade version to be similar to the doughy, garlicky Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits. Introduced in 1992, these biscuits became so popular that the company now makes a mix (just add cheddar, water and butter!) For the 25th anniversary of the biscuits, Red Lobster even introduced a limited-edition, biscuit-flavored lip balm.
Both of my grandmothers passed down their recipes for their cheese biscuits, which are more like wafers than the fluffy biscuits you split in half and serve with butter. In need of comfort right now (aren’t we all), I made a batch from ingredients that I had on hand. They go well with beef stew – if you don’t eat them all first.
Grandma Bertie’s Cheese Biscuits (1920s)
Makes about 16 biscuits
8 ounces shredded cheddar cheese
1/4 pound (4 ounces or 1/2 cup) butter, softened
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups flour
Cayenne pepper, to taste (optional)
- Mix cheese, butter, salt, and cayenne pepper well.
- Add the flour and stir until well combined.
- Shape the batter into a roll approximately 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Wrap in foil or plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator at least one hour or overnight.
- When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Slice the dough into thin wafers. Place a pecan half on top of each one.
- Bake for 15 minutes or until the cheese browns and the biscuits are crisp.
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For a dessert to end 2018, I found a recipe with just eight ingredients, all of them pantry staples: butter, two kinds of sugar, eggs, vanilla, flour, chocolate, and nuts. The shortbread base with melted chocolate and nuts on top looks good and tastes appropriately decadent for a New Year’s party. The recipe comes from a classic Richmond cookbook, The Stuffed Cougar (William Byrd Press, 1973). 
Just in time for Thanksgiving, my neighbor organized a pie swap. Each of us baked a pie, then sliced it up and shared a sample with the other participants. For ideas, I looked through handwritten recipes from my grandmother and baker extraordinaire, Bertie. At first all I could find was a cheese pie, which specified using “Swiss cheese from Switzerland” – perhaps an exotic ingredient in the 1930s and 1940s, when she collected most of the recipes. A more careful look yielded the far more seasonal Fresh Cranberry Orange Pie. 
You won’t find too many sumptuous meals in Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy in the Civil War. You will find two women gardening to supplement their meager larder in 
These dog days of August make frozen custard more inviting than a pie with a custard filling, but I couldn’t resist the call from Yinzerella of 
heritagerecipebox 