Sweet Potato Biscuits, TWD

I have never really gotten the hang of making biscuits. Or basically anything that requires cutting the butter and flour together. I remember my mother-in-law trying to teach me how to cut butter and flour for pie crusts using a knife and fork. Maybe it isn't just the butter thing. I worked in a fast food restaurant for awhile as a biscuit maker. They had a mix I would pour in a giant bowl and all I had to do was add buttermilk and mix and cut. Even those were not turning out right and rather than demanding some retraining, I quit. (That was also with a three month old baby and getting up at 4:00 a.m. to go make the biscuits. Maybe that is why I quit.)

I felt a little intimidated by this week's Tuesdays with Dori recipe, Sweet Potato Biscuits, chosen by Erin at Prudence Pennywise. It actually was a very easy recipe and I did a decent job getting the butter cut in. It may have been too floury still, but next time I am going to try grating the butter in and see if that helps. I mashed canned sweet potatoes with a fork and left them a little lumpy. I really liked the little sweet potato bits in the biscuits. These were really delicious and simple. I think mine did not rise much because I scraped baking powder out of the bottom of the can. It was pretty old.



I am going to get some new baking powder, grate the butter, and try these again soon. You can get the recipe on Prudence Pennywise or on page 26 of Baking, From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan.

Two Tuesdays with Dorie

I have been trying to get caught up on my Tuesdays with Dorie baking. I have actually only missed one recipe since I joined in January, the chocolate souffle. But my baking and posting has been late for many other recipes. Last week, I finally made the Chocolate-Crunched Caramel Tart, chosen by Carla of Chocolate Moosey, on Thursday. We had a ...situation...in our house and I didn't use my kitchen for several days. My brother knew we weren't using our kitchen and invited us over for dinner the day our situation was resolved. I decided to try to whip this tart up really quickly, and I did! I threw the dough in the food processor, pressed it in the pan, put it in the freezer, ran a kid on an errand, called home to have the other kid preheat the oven, came back and baked it while microwaving cream for both the caramel and the ganache and just threw this baby together to be chilled during dinner. The ganache was still a little runny, but I thought it was really great and even better the next day when it had set up nicely.



This week, I also made some super speedy split level pudding this afternoon and I am going to get my post posted today...on TUESDAY, god willing. I got called to substitute teach today and had a marching thing to do this evening. I came home from school, read P & Q, and decided to use Romaine's suggestion of using the microwave again. I had leftover ganache from last week's tart and made the vanilla pudding in the microwave. It was so simple. I also took someone else's suggestion of putting it in wine glasses to see the split levels. So thank you fellow TWDers whom I don't have time to link to for the great ideas!



And thanks to Garrett of Flavor of Vanilla for this week's pick, which can be found on pages 384- 385 of Baking, From My Home to Yours.