Perfect Sweet Potato Biscuits
Hey YA’LL!! Happy Holidays! If you’ve been following me for any amount of time, you know I am all about that biscuit life! Even as someone who follows a moderate to low carb diet most of the time, I can’t turn down a good biscuit. Since it’s the holiday season, I wanted to be sure…
Hey YA’LL!! Happy Holidays! If you’ve been following me for any amount of time, you know I am all about that biscuit life! Even as someone who follows a moderate to low carb diet most of the time, I can’t turn down a good biscuit. Since it’s the holiday season, I wanted to be sure to give you a little switch up on the traditional biscuit. I’m pumping out a lot of Thanksgiving content, so I will keep this post fairly short, but let’s get into the inspo really quick!
THE INSPIRATION
The inspiration for these biscuits actually comes from me making these every year and combining several recipes to try to find a perfect version. I love sweet potato flavored things and I love biscuits, but I could never get a just right recipe, until I started making my own version about 3 years ago. From other recipes, I found the dough to always be a little too wet or too dry, never an in between. I also found them to turn out a little tougher than I’d like because of having to add more flour and knead because of the wetness in the dough. I find with these, they are the right ratio of flour to liquid which yields a super tender biscuit. They’re also perfectly balanced in the seasonings so they can be eaten plain or with something like maple butter. Mmmm!
THE DEETS
The details of these biscuits really come down to 2 things: seasonings and shortening. While these biscuits are made primarily with butter, a little shortening cut into the dough gives the inside a more flaky texture. You can use unflavored shortening, but I find that butter flavored shortening really amps up the butter flavor and does not cause the dough to need more seasoning. Speaking of spices, these I love to use a combo of ginger, cinnamon, all spice and cloves. Sometimes I do my own mix, depending on how I’m feeling, but most times, I grab gingerbread spice because it’s all of those flavors in a perfect proportion. And let’s not forget salt! It’s important to use both salted butter and a bit of salt in the dough in order to enhance the flavor and fight against the dairy which can cause things to taste more bland!
TIPS FOR MAKING
When it comes to biscuit making less is more. Less time handing the dough and less time finding things you need for the recipe in order to work with ingredients that are as cold as possible. Here are a few more tips:
- Work with cold everything. Bowl, cutters and especially ingredients. Allow your sweet potato to cool completely before adding it to the biscuit dough. Cold butter creates steam which creates rise. No flat biscuits!
- This recipe can use buttermilk or heavy cream. The buttermilk adds a bit of tang and gives rise to a slightly taller biscuit while the heavy cream gives a blank canvas for the spices to really shine through.
- Do not “play with” your dough too much, else you’ll have tough biscuits. I find that laminating the dough 3 times is enough for great layers and texture.
- Make and freeze ahead. You can make these up until 1 month before you’ll need them. Just place the cut biscuits in the freezer and add to a ziploc once frozen. Add 1-2 minutes to the baking time to accommodate for them being frozen.
That’s it for these biscuits. Make sure you head to your grocery and pick up everything you’ll need for these biscuits. They are truly something to be thankful for!! Happy Thanksgiving ya’ll. I hope it’s especially great this year.
Don’t forget to tag me in your photos online @lizeeangel or using #lizeeangel. And as always, comment below and please, like, share and follow me on youtube, instagram, twitter, facebook and pinterest!
Perfect Sweet Potato Biscuits
Ingredients
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 450 degrees and position rack in upper third of oven.
- In a cold bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, butter and shortening and mix together until the dough looks shaggy/sandy. You can use two cold forks, a cold dough cutter or your fingers, working quickly. Set aside.
- In the cup of a blender or in a powerful food processor, combine sweet potato, 1 egg, heavy cream, gingerbread spice and brown sugar and process until smooth.
- Add sweet potato mixture to flour mixture and, using a spoon or rubber spatula, combine until all ingredients are combined. Dough will be on the wetter side, but will get to right texture during next step.
- Generously flour working surface and add biscuit dough. Grabbing a healthy pinch of flour, sprinkle over the top and begin to laminate dough.
- Flatten dough into a rectangle. Fold the two sides over the middle, creating thirds. Next, fold the top over the bottom to make a half. Flatten out and repeat 2 more times.
- If dough is sticky on your hands, add small pinches of flour during lamination. Dough should be tender and soft but neither crumby or sticky. If dough is too wet, it will not rise appropriately. If too dry, it will not stay together.
- After last lamination, flatten into a rectangle and cut biscuits either using a biscuit cutter or a knife. DO NOT USE A CUP OR GLASS. This will seal the edges and destroy the layers you worked so hard to create! When using a cutter, go straight up and down and do not twist. This will also seal the layers
- Arrange biscuits on a baking sheet so that they are almost touching. At this step, you can freeze on tray and transfer to a bag when frozen to save for up to 1 month.
- Add remaining egg to the same cup the heavy cream was in along with water and whisk until well combined. If cooking from frozen, heavy cream is not required, but up water to 2 tsp.
- Brush over the top of the biscuits and place baking sheet in oven. Bake for 15-18 minutes, or until biscuits are risen and fully cooked through in the middle.
- Brush with additional butter or syrup while hot and serve warm. Enjoy!
Notes:
If you feel that your biscuits got too warm during the making, pop them in the freezer for 5-10 mins before baking. This allows the fat to reharden so that you can get a good rise to your biscuits.
If you cannot find gingerbread spice in stores, ou can use homemade gingerbread spice (2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp ginger powder, 1/4 tsp ground clove, 1/4 tsp ground allspice and 1/4 tsp nutmeg).
OR sub it for 1tbsp apple pie spice or pumpkin spice
