Sunday, February 21, 2010

Episode 5 Your sweetness is my weakness!

Sorry for the delay, my HP computer turned out to be defective. HP is selling bad juju. Anyway we are here to celebrate the love and the food.
I have been experementing with different flavors of biscuits. A friend suggested I try Sweet Potato flavored biscuits. Well I did not get to make them for an ONYX meeting I was going to but the day I got home, armed with my new rollling pin, I went at it.

First you buy a couple of nice sized Sweet Potatoes for mashing. now for the record I had never made mashed potatoes from scratch before. Any mashed I made before came from a box or premade ( which I am quickly taking a dislike to when it comes to everything). So for those who like me are new to this, DO NOT THROW THE WHOLE POTATO INTO THE POT!!!! Which I did before deciding to check a few recipes. First wash the potato off then peel it then cut it into small pieces. Throw the pieces into a pot and let boil for 20 minutes.
After 20 minutes drain the pot and put it back on the stove. Then you add one whole stick of butter (YES!!!) and you take a spoon and you mash! MASH like you have never mashed before. In about 5 minutes you wil have a good sweet potato mash going.

When you taste it you will get a hint of sweetness but if you need a little more you can add honey or syrup. Then give it about a hour to cool off. I know I know it smells great and you want to dive in but sometimes the main ingredient of alchemy is patience.

Set your oven to 350 and let it heat up. Mix 1 cup of flour with 1/4 tsp of salt and 11/2 tsp of baking powder. As always when I am working with flour I like to run a wire whisk thru it a few times. Get a little air in there and it combines all the dry ingredients a lot better. Then add 3 tbsp of vegetable oil, 1/3 cup of milk. I like to use buttermilk when making biscuits but whole milk works just as well. It does not taste that different. Give everything a quick turn around stir with a spoon, literally just one quick turn, then add 3/4 of a cup of mashed sweet potatoes. Now stir it all together into a dough.

OK now here is where we go in two different directions..do you want the traditonal round biscuit or do you want to drop it like it is hot?

For the regular round toss the dough out onto a floured surface and take a rolling pan to it. Take out your biscuit cutter and you should get 10 good rounds out of it. Now until two days ago I did not have a rolling pan and I still don't have biscuit cutter so I use a plastic cup with a little flour on it to roll and I use a drinking glass to cut the rounds out. Toss em on a baking tray for about 10-12 minutes and your good to go.

Now what I have recently discovered is the love of the drop biscuit. instead of rolling the dough out I just take a large spoon and scoop up some dough and drop it on the cookie sheet. You don't get the traditional round that your use to but you get biscuits with a lot of character. This is actually how Red lobster makes those addictive cheddar biscuits.

With both for a little extra kick sprinkle just a little cinnamon on top of the biscuits before you shove them in the oven.

Now that I am a little more computer stable is there anything anyone wants to see me try?

1 comment:

  1. Hi! I love your blog (from one foodie to another). I'm searching for the perfect sweet potato pound cake. One that is moist without being too dense. I've failed at it a couple of times, and I used to run a baking business! So maybe you could help me out?

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