TWD-Sweet Potato Biscuits

Knowing that today's Tuesdays with Dorie project was to be "Sweet Potato Biscuits", I purchased some gigantic ones at the Farmers Market over the weekend. You know how they say, "Everything's Bigger in Texas"? Well, these things were ridiculous! Each one weighed in at over 20 oz and they were shaped like enormous bulbs of garlic. Here is a photo of one after it was oven roasted:

I just washed these two big boys and popped them in a 425 degree oven for an hour and 15 minutes. The skin got all nice and charred and the first layer was soft, sweet and mushy. However, because these were so big and thick, the middles were still kind of hard. So, when I went to mash them in my food processor, they were still a little solid. No problem! I added a little bit of orange juice and made a truly delicious sweet potato puree. The recipe called for canned sweet potatoes, but I couldn't use canned when it is sweet potato season. It almost feels like fall around here. It has been cool in the mornings and evenings and gorgeous and one can imagine that it is autumn (except for the fact that it hits 80 every afternoon).

I happened to have some White Lily flour on hand and used that because it is supposed to be the ultimate biscuit flour. I added about 1/4 tsp of cinnamon, about 1/8 tsp of freshly grated nutmeg and a pinch of cayenne pepper. Working the butter into the flour felt so good, though I may have overworked it because I was having so much fun! When I stirred in my sweet potato puree, it looked like this:

All it took was a couple of good smooshes and the dough came together. Rather than work it more and develop the gluten, I just flattened it on the countertop with my hand. I then used my recently acquired biscuit cutter and cut out 20 cute little biscuits from the dough. I thought that I had been gentle and had minimized handling, but they didn't puff up all that much. Here they are before baking:

And after:

All morning I thought about what I would make to go with my biscuits. Funny to pick the bread first and then go from there, but, as I have said, the bread is my favorite part! Anyways, I wanted to make chili but then thought that my kids wouldn't eat it as neither is any good with a spoon nor can handle the spiciness I would use. Anyways, I got lazy and just bought a store roasted chicken from Hubbell and Hudson and served it with their very tasty barbecue sauce and made some garam masala spiced green beans. The biscuits tasted great, though I wished they had been lighter and flakier. They were utterly divine dipped into the barbecue sauce.

Z man had 4 of them and kept asking for more "cookies" (they were that flat).