Sweet Potato Biscuits
I was asked to collaborate with ONE.org to create a recipe (and video) using sweet potatoes in order to drum up awareness and excitement for their nutrition campaign this year: Sweet Potato on the Menu; Nutrition on the Agenda, the goal being to encourage world leaders to invest in agriculture to decrease malnutrition. The sweet potato has much nutritional value, coupled with its tolerance of less-than-ideal growing conditions such as drought and poor soil. Click here for more details on their research. Funnily, I had just been looking through my recipe collection the week before and turned up an old card for sweet potato biscuits, a recipe I’d come up with a few years ago and then forgotten about. Perfect timing, you guys!
These biscuits are slightly (naturally) sweet and the shaving of nutmeg kinda pushes them over the edge into delicacy territory. I really like the nuttiness and texture that using whole wheat flour gives, but I’m sure you could use white flour here, no problemo, or half and half. Like most biscuit recipes, the amount of butter isn’t set in stone and you could use as little as two tablespoons to as much as 6 tablespoons, depending on how buttery you like your biscuits and how much butter you afford yourself in your dietary allowances and whatever. The sweet potato adds moisture and a great texture to these so you don’t really need as much butter to get the same softness and tenderness as buttermilk biscuits.
If you’d like to be a part of the ONE campaign for nutrition, view the petition here.
Sweet Potato Biscuits
- Prep Time: 10 mins
- Cook Time: 10 mins
- Total Time: 20 minutes
- Yield: 12 1x
Ingredients
- 1/2 pound sweet potato
- 2/3 cup milk (or a little more, depending on your sweet potato)
- 1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
- 4 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- dash nutmeg (optional but very nice)
- 3 tablespoons butter
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 450º F
- Cook the sweet potato somehow (boiling, microwaving, or baking) until it’s soft. Peel and mash enough sweet potato flesh to measure 3/4 cup mashed sweet potato.
- Add 2/3 cup milk to the potato and mix. Set aside.
- Whisk the flour with the dry ingredients.
- Use a large-hole cheese grater to grate the butter into the dry mix, or just dice it small and toss to combine.
- Add the milk/potato mix and stir until all the dry ingredients are moistened. (You may need to add another tablespoon or two of milk to get it into a ball.)
- Turn dough out onto a floured surface and pat out to about 1/2 inch thickness.
- Cut into 2-inch biscuits, either with a round cutter or just cut it into squares with a knife or pizza cutter.
- Place biscuits about an inch apart on un-greased sheet. Bake 10-12 minutes until golden.
30 Comments
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Hi Hilah,
I know this is a bit of a stretch, but do you think I could adapt this recipe to make pumpkin spice biscuits. I was thinking of replacing the sweet potato puree with pumpkin puree and using whole spice instead of just nutmeg. What do you think? Do I keep the amounts the same?
Thanks and I love what you do!
Cheers,
Anu
Hi Anu!
I think that’s a great idea. I bet you wouldn’t have to make any changes to the measurements at all. I might suggest you add a tablespoon of sugar to get the same sweetness of the sweet potatoes. Hope you like them!
One of the things I like to do with leftover pumpkin batter is to mix one box of Jiffy corn muffin mix into it and bake pumpkin corn muffins….with apricot jam.
Brilliant idea! That sounds wonderful. I bet that would be great instead of rolls at Thanksgiving, too. Thanks for that idea!
So I totally had all the ingredients just laying around my kitchen and decided on a whim at 10 pm on a work night to whip these up for my breakfast tomorrow . So happy to hear about One.org too. Checking that out too 🙂
Ooh, that should be a great breakfast, Emily Anne! Hope you enjoy.
Do you have any recommendations for how to serve these? Just butter? Any kind of jams/jellies?
Hi Jeff! I just put butter on them, but honey would be delightful and I could imagine some marmalade or ginger preserves in the mix, too. 🙂
hi hilah.
just made. nice. i dont have nutmeg. i put cinnamon ground. and abit sugar after baked because children love sweet
Yum! Perfect addition, Safarah.
This was a great reminder! I had made sweet potato cornbread some time back and totally forgotten about it. These look great, but sweet potatoes in cornbread are also awesome.
Thank you for that idea, Diane!
Hey Hilah, Love your stuff…Your recipes are always easy and they always turn out GREAT! my question is about your sweet potato biscuits…made one batch and they turned out great, shared them with some friends who said they were the best they’ve ever had in fact….but i digress…i would like to make them for my family for thanksgiving dinner…i know that baking rules are different than just making soup or something so i was wondering if it’s ok to double or even triple the recipe you have on line…wow that was alot (been drinkin’ alittle tonight) Thanks!!!
Hi David! That’s great! I’m so happy to hear your friends loved them. 🙂
I think you could safely double it with no worries. Have a great Thanksgiving! Thanks for writing.
Made these for breakfast this morning. They’re awesome with apple butter. 🙂
Yum! Thanks for the suggestion, Robby! That sounds great.
Hey Hilah! Greetings from Roku fans in Wyoming. My hubby saw this video and made me watch it, which was surprising because he’s really not a biscuits kind of guy. We also took a gander at your vegan chili video with Karol and ‘cuz I had a kajillion fresh tomatoes needing to be consumed, I made a barbarian (meat) version of the chili with dried kidney, pinto & black beans. I wanted to make these biscuits to go with the chili and decided to use up some roasted butternut squash rather than dig into the sweet potatoes. OMG! Hubby Greg says these are the best biscuits he’s ever had. They were fab and I loved, loved, loved the trick of grating the cold butter into the flour. I am inspired and will be trying variations of this recipe with different ingredients and spices. You are awesome — we love your upbeat style and low maintenance recipes. Greg just laughs through your videos, especially when you swear. Martha Stewart you are not! (We like YOU much better!!) Big hugs to ya ~ PAMELA & GREG
Hi Pamela and Greg!
These biscuits are just fabulous with chili, aren’t they? It’s a match made in heaven — more perfect than cornbread with chili I might dare say. 😉
I’m very happy y’all found the channel and hope to hear from you again!
-h
I’m really excited to try this recipe, but as I have no sweet potatoes, I too will be working with pumpkin Puree! One question: could you possibly put metric measurements on your recipes? I’m living in the UK now and don’t have the lovely access to the familiar American measurements… And butter does not come in the convenient sticks here! Only in these 250G blocks!!! Thus, my cooking skillz are taking a turn and I need the extra support! Thanks again!
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for the tip to grate the butter!!!!! It has changed my life and every product I make that needs to have butter cut into it!!!!!
Hooray!!! SO glad to hear what a difference that makes to you, Kathy! 😀
This is a great idea. I will make tomorrow for kids’ snack. I was thinking of what to make for kids snack after school. Your recipes are super healthy. Thanks
Oh yeah, this would be a great snack with some butter and jam and milk. Hope the kids enjoy, Joyce!
I made these for a thanksgiving breakfast and no one could tell that they had sweet potato in them. They just tasted like really good, fluffy, moist biscuits. My mother in law said she didnt even need butter it tasted so good. I loved the tip about using a cheese grater for the butter! That helped me out. This recipe was great. I will be making it again!
Great to hear, Cheri! Thanks for the feedback.
We had these tonight and really liked them so much that I shared on our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/confessionsofarealfoodmom?fref=nf). I was really impressed at how well the sweet potato covered the sometimes gritty texture of traditional whole wheat biscuits. Thanks for this great recipe! I’ll definitely be making these again soon.
Thanks for sharing! Glad you enjoyed the biscuits.
I’ve made these a couple times with my 3 year old niece and they are perfect. They’re fun and easy to make and they’re good but also healthy. Her mom loves them too b/c she can take them to my niece’s school when it’s her turn to bring treats and it’s not like she’s bringing a sugar bomb cake or something. Thanks for the recipe!
Can these be made gluten free? If so, what flour would you replace it with. Would oat flour work?
I’m sorry, I don’t do enough GF baking to say for sure.