Sweet Potato Biscuits

Sweet Potato Biscuits - made October 12, 2013 from Martha Stewart

Goodbye, third sweet potato - you were sacrificed for this recipe because I loved how the picture of these biscuits looked on Martha's website.  Unfortunately, you might've been sacrificed in vain because my biscuits didn't come out looking like hers. Nor did they taste very sweet potato-ey.  Sorry about that but I will think of you fondly for contributing to the cause.

Okay, now that I'm done talking to the sweet potato, here's the deal with these biscuits: easy to make and only gets as complex as boiling the sweet potato I was conversing with, mashing it with a little salt and pepper and using 3/4 cup of it in the biscuits. Then you make like any other biscuits by mixing wet and dry ingredients, patting dough into a disc and cutting out round biscuits to bake closely together in a pan.

Mine didn't get the height of Martha's biscuits so they were a bit flat.  Not sure why but maybe I should've kept the dough disc thicker before cutting out the biscuits.  They were good but I didn't really get much of a sweet potato flavor from them. They tasted like normal biscuits that were slightly colored orange. Oh well, back to the store for more sweet potatoes and back to crawling pinterest for more sweet potato recipes.

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for kneading and shaping
2 tablespoons light-brown sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
6 tablespoons chilled unsalted butter, cut into pieces, plus 1/2 tablespoon melted butter and more for pan
3/4 cup, chilled Sweet-Potato Puree
1/3 cup buttermilk

1. Make the dough: In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda. With a pastry blender or two knives, cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse meal, with some pea-sized lumps of butter remaining. In a small bowl, whisk together sweet potato puree and buttermilk; stir quickly into flour mixture until combined; do not overmix.
2. Shape the biscuits: Turn out dough onto a lightly floured surface, and knead very gently until dough comes together but is still slightly lumpy, five or six times. (If dough is too sticky, work in up to 1/4 cup additional flour.) Shape into a disk, and pat to an even 1-inch thickness. With a floured 2-inch biscuit cutter, cut out biscuits as close together as possible. Gather together scraps, and repeat to cut out more biscuits; do not reuse scraps more than once.
3. Bake the biscuits: Preheat oven to 425 degrees, with rack on lower shelf. (I baked at 400 degrees as 425 is too hot for my oven and would burn the tops of the biscuits before they're fully baked.) Butter an 8-inch cake pan. Arrange biscuits snugly in pan (to help them stay upright). Brush with melted butter. Bake until golden, rotating once, 20 to 24 minutes.