With its mixture of firm and soft textures, a biscuit can be a blank canvas of possibilities. But they’re only made possible by a perfectly cooked biscuit — often made with a store-bought mix. As we recently discovered, not all are created equal, and the worst one is tied to a beloved celebrity.
We tried and ranked 12 store-bought options and ranked the Duncan Hines Dolly Parton buttermilk biscuit mix as the worst. From a distance, everything about it seems perfect. It comes in a bright pink box. The biscuits on the front look inviting. Heck, as we noted in our review, even Dolly Parton’s famous hit “Jolene” was playing during our trip to buy the mix. Unfortunately, the good vibes ended once the final product was made.
Duncan Hines has a whole line of Dolly Parton baking mixes, but this one didn’t exactly resemble biscuits. Instead what we got looked more like a loaf of bread, and not a good tasting one. The milk didn’t fully absorb into the mix, leaving bits of dried powder throughout, and the finished product tasted more like a ciabatta loaf than a biscuit. We even made two batches to double-check our work and got the same result again.
Not alone in our disappointment
Buttermilk biscuits may be a breakfast staple in many parts of the country, but we don’t recommend making them with the Duncan Hines Dolly Parton buttermilk biscuit mix. On the company’s website, reviewers describe the biscuits as just okay and lacking flavor. Other reviewers take things a step further and describe the mix as a flavorless waste of money. Some even describe the biscuits as dry and worse than canned offerings.
Reviewers on Walmart.com take the biscuits to task for being dry and tasteless. More than one customer notes that it takes almost the same amount of time to make these as it does to make homemade biscuits. At least one reviewer says the biscuits didn’t come together easily or correctly, echoing the struggles we faced.
We don’t know if Dolly Parton actually eats these, but we’ll be leaving them on the grocery store shelf. Rather than being disappointed, we recommend picking up Cracker Barrel’s biscuit mix. The taste is nostalgic for scores of people, and we found them easy to throw together with a consistent firm-but-crumbly texture that makes for the perfect biscuit.
