Jake has been obsessed with making his own version of the venerable Mickey D’s staple, Eggs McMuffin.

His obsession is really with biscuits. He’s been on a tear for the last month to perfect what I’d previously considered was just a  homely disc of dough. Oh, how wrong I was. Jake is of the unerring belief that biscuits are the foundation of all that is breakfast. Do not mess with the biscuit.

Yesterday morning he made a version from the back of the bag of Southern Biscuit Formula L Biscuit Mix, which, wouldn’t you know it, required a lot of lard. Bonafide Southern biscuits require shovelfuls of fat; it’s not a biscuit without it. Lard is what gives biscuits their dense flaky texture.

He baked them up, slit them in half and filled each with a delicately fried egg, crispy bacon, a bit of Gruyere cheese and what I considered the piece de resistance, a smear of creamy dill mustard. Well, eating this puff of heaven transported me to a place where Ronald McDonald was my personal bee-atch.  I oohed and aaahed throughout the meal while Jake thought the biscuit, which although dense and chewy, could use some improvement. He thought it didn’t have enough depth, enough nuance. I didn’t realize my husband spoke like this.

So he opted to made them again for dinner last night. Only this time, he whipped out our ole culinary nemesis Cook’s Illustrated and took a crack at their customarily complicated, overwrought 4-page version. This version required no lard, just lots of butter and buttermilk and whatever herbs I could scrounge from the garden (parsley and oregano). The finished biscuit was a little lighter and flakier, but the consistency was like that of a scone….WHICH ISN’T TECHNICALLY A BISCUIT.  Suck on that, Cook’s Illustrated!!  I preferred the more jejune first version, but that’s also because I have issues with CI, while Jake went with the CI version.

Oh, a note about the eggs. We recommend frying the egg a bit on the hard side. If the yolks are soft, it dribbles out of the sandwich when you pick it up, messing your plate, and it also soaks the biscuit.

Try your own version of the Eggs McHuzband. You’ll be McLovin it, I’m sure.