Many years ago — when I was young and single — I used to spend whole weekends reading. Or reading and talking to people on AOL instant messenger. Either way.

Anyway, one of those weekends, I read “The Secret Life of Bees.” It’s a lovely book, and you should read it, if you haven’t. But it made me crave honey like crazy, particularly biscuits with honey. Since I didn’t know how to make biscuits, I got a bag of those frozen biscuits that you can bake one at a time (brilliant, btw), and ate them, one at a time, drenched in honey.

I won’t say that wasn’t delicious. But these biscuits, friends, are something much different and much more special.

Now, obviously these take a bit more effort than opening a freezer bag and popping an already-made biscuit in the oven. But they don’t take THAT much effort, and if I had know how easy they were way back when, I would definitely have baked a batch.

These are buttery, flaky and light — delightful on their own, but also the perfect vehicle for honey, jam or anything else you can think of. They don’t require any special equipment — just a bowl, a counter and a baking sheet. And don’t worry if you can’t find buttermilk at your grocery store; you can just add some lemon juice or vinegar to regular milk and use that.

As you can see, I served these as part of the Southern-themed brunch for the Georgia-LSU game (along with cheesy grits casserole and candied bacon). But there’s really no wrong time for biscuits.

Buttermilk biscuits (Adapted from Taste of the Lowcountry, makes about two dozen biscuits)
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1  1/2 sticks (12 tablespoons/6 ounces) cold unsalted butter
1/4 cup cold buttermilk (shake before measuring)

Preheat the oven to 350F. Make sure you have a clean counter or other flat workspace to pat out the dough later. Put some parchment paper or a silicone baking mat on a baking sheet.

Use a fork to stir the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar together in a large bowl. Cut the butter into small pieces (roughly 1/2-inch chunks, but it doesn’t have to be exact) and add the pieces to the flour mixture.

Using a pastry blender, two forks or your hands, incorporate the butter into the flour (you can sort of rub/crumble the mixture together if you’re using your hands) until the mixture looks like coarse cornmeal with a few pea-sized pieces of butter remaining.

Pour the buttermilk into the flour/butter mixture and stir just until the mixture starts to look like dough (it will be soft and sticky). Spread a little bit of extra flour on your clean counter or workspace, then gather the dough together with your hands and dump it out onto the floured surface.

Use the palms of your hands to pat the dough out to about 1/2 inch thick, then use a biscuit cutter (or the mouth of a glass or jar) to cut out as many biscuits as possible. Place the biscuits about an inch away from each other on the baking sheet, then gather the remaining dough together into a ball (try not to smoosh it up too much, if possible) and pat it out again. Cut as many more biscuits from that as possible, and continue until you don’t have any more dough.

Bake the biscuits for 10 to 15 minutes — until they turn light golden brown. Let sit for 5 minutes, then serve warm.