In January 2021, a Sports Anchor/Reporter named Mike Uva from South Carolina drove to a nearby Bojangles and ordered a Pimento Cheese Cajun Filet Biscuit (spicy fried chicken with pimento cheese spread on a buttery biscuit) and was shocked to find that the Bojangles employee swapped his buttery biscuit for a sweetened blueberry biscuit (Bojangles calls these Bo-Berry Biscuits and they are sweet biscuits topped with a sugary glaze). Uva tweeted about it with a photo and seemed worried at first, but soon learned that it was a tempting combination that Bojangles might want to lean in to.
Here’s his original tweet:
Bojangles was tagged and their social media team decided to run with it. Between Uva’s and Bojangle’s promotion of the tweet it seemed to catch traction in the South Eastern states where you can find Bojangles. Over the next few days Uva shared and retweeted many photos that his followers had shared with him of their experience with what people were now calling “The Uva.”
Bojangles marketing team eventually cooked up the following tweet with a much more impressive looking breakfast sandwich.
At this point, I figured I had to make it. Read on to see how I tackled it.
Pimento cheese
I started with my Mom’s pimento cheese recipe.
Mom's pimento cheese
An awesome addition to a sausage biscuit sandwich. This is my mom's recipe. Growing up, I enjoyed a lot of pimento cheese sandwiches, with just the spread and sliced bread. This recipe also works great as a snack with crackers or pretzels.
Get RecipeFried chicken
And a quick and dirty recipe I use fairly often to fry chicken for a sandwich or for chicken tenders.
Buttermilk fried chicken thighs
A quick and easy recipe to prepare fried chicken for sandwiches. The cayenne gives it some heat. You can omit that if you don't want it spicy or even double it if you're extra bold.
Get RecipeBlueberry biscuit
After I had my cheese and chicken sorted, I started working on a plan for a Bojangles Bo-Berry biscuit copy cat recipe. I began with my typical Buttermilk biscuit and added some sugar. Since it wasn’t blueberry season, I opted for the frozen variety. You have to fold the blueberries into the biscuit dough as you’re doing your final folds or otherwise you’ll end up with a big purple mess. (edit from the future: I have made this many times with fresh blueberries and it works just fine, but you should cut your blueberries in half first if they’re really big)
I made a glaze with confectioners sugar and milk, and I applied mine when the biscuits were still pretty warm. My glaze wasn’t as thick as Bojangles, but the flavors were great and I was pretty excited with the results. If I wanted to be closer to what Bojangles often uses in their Bo-Berry biscuit promotional materials, I would put my glaze in a small ziplock bag and wait for both the glaze and the biscuit to be fairly cool and cut a tiny corner out of the ziplock bag and squirt the glaze into a diagonal shape on top of each biscuit.
All together this turned out to be a great sandwich. Super savory from the fried chicken and pimento cheese balanced out with a good amount of sweetness from the biscuit. I think if I did it again, I would probably leave off the glaze on any blueberry biscuit that I planned to eat in sandwich form because it got a little sticky and messy.
You can find the blueberry biscuit recipe below this photo of my finished Uva.
Make an Uva and become a much more exciting person!
Blueberry biscuits
This is an attempt at a copycat recipe for Bojangle's Bo-berry biscuit. If you like sweet and savory combinations in your food, you might enjoy this with a fried pork sausage patty or slice of ham.
Ingredients:
- 2.5 cups self-rising flour (300g)
- 1 stick frozen butter
- 1 cup cold buttermilk
- 1⁄4 cup white sugar
- 1 cup frozen thawed blueberries
- 2 tbsp melted butter
- 1⁄4 cup milk
- 2 cups confectioners sugar
- 1⁄2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions:
- Grate frozen butter into the sifted self rising flour. Add sugar. Stir to combine until the butter is fully coated by flour.
- Put bowl in freezer for 10 minutes
- Combine buttermilk to bring together as a dough. Stir no more than 15 times. Overworking the dough at this stage could cause your finished biscuits to be more tough.
- On a floured surface dump out dough and roll with a rolling pin. Dust with flour as needed when dough gets sticky. Fold the dough over on itself five different times creating layers. Each time you fold, add some blueberries. The point here is to get them incorporated into your dough without smashing them to bits.
- Roll dough to 1/2 inch thick.
- Cut biscuits into circles or squares and place on parchment paper lined baking sheet. When cutting, you do not want to twist the cutter. Twisting while cutting will ruin the layers that you created with folding.
- Placing your cut biscuits next to each other (touching) on the sheet pan will help them rise taller.
- Bake at 475 degrees for around 15 minutes. Check around the 12 minute mark to make sure they do not brown too much.
- When biscuits are done, transfer them off of your baking pan onto a cooling rack to stop the bottoms from cooking further. Paint the melted butter on top of each biscuit or you can prepare a glaze if you want them to be more like the bo-berry biscuits at Bojangles.
- (OPTIONAL) To make the optional glaze, combine all ingredients in a saucepan over medium low heat. Whisk until fully combined. Spoon over biscuits right before serving.
Notes:
Because this biscuit recipe has sugar, you will probably see it brown faster than a normal biscuit recipe.
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