TWD--Sweet Potato Biscuits and/or Pumpkin Biscuits

I made half a batch of the Sweet Potato Biscuits chosen by Erin of Prudence Pennywise for Tuesday's With Dorie this week.  They are good biscuits, but I learned that no one here really likes biscuits.  Well, I do.  But I shouldn't eat half a batch of sweet potato biscuits.  I only wish they actually taste like sweet potatoes.  I didn't think they really had much more of a taste than regular biscuits.  I used real steamed sweet potatoes that I pureed, instead of canned.  I pulsed the dry ingredients and cold butter in the food processor, carefully.  It worked great.  I carefully folding the sweet potato in with a fork.  I also added about 1/2 tablespoon of cream to get the dough together and moist.  And I added a pinch of nutmeg.  (Can't taste it.)   **Update, write up was Monday.  Tuesday--today, the sweet potato in the biscuits is much more noticeable in taste!  There may be some peanut butter on these in the very near future!

I thought these were good warm out of the oven with some butter.  Good pick, Erin, I'm glad I made these.

But that's not the end of the story.

On Saturday, we had a little birthday party for Taylor, it was the one where friends are invited.  I planned it a little too late to get very many of his friends to come.  But I think it worked out great.  His best little buddy, Joey came and together with Scott and Parker, we helped them each carve a pumpkin and then as Taylor wanted, they all got to frost and decorate a cupcake.

Picture intermission----

Taylor and Kevin thought it was fun to leave some of the guts hanging out of the pumpkin's face.  Taylor and Joey drew a picture of a jack-o-lantern face on a piece of paper and Kevin and I cut them out.

Kevin actually got Scott to pose for a picture and it looks good.  This is rare.  Yay!  Scott cut his pumpkin all by himself, although he made me do most of the gutting.  No one likes to gut a pumpkin.  Go figure.  Actually, I loathe it, too.

Parker drew his face on a piece of paper, too, and we used a star cutter to cut one of the eyes.  He did some of the cutting himself and I helped with some.

Sam napped through the pumpkin carving (thank goodness!), but he was excited to see them when he woke up.  I love this next photo.  Sam LOVES the Flip Camera, which I affectionately called "The Bertolli"  (Thanks BlogHer and Bertolli who gave me the camera when I got to go to the dinner sponsored by Bertolli at St. Supery Winery on my trip to San Francisco last month.)  Sam can use the camera with ease and he's only 2!  He gets it out of my purse now when we're at the store (instead of my cell phone, which would drive me nuts!).  Anyway, Sam grabbed "the Bertolli" so he could take pictures of the pumpkins just like his Daddy was.  I love how you can see their reflection in the (dirty) window in this picture.

The cupcakes I made were from a yellow cake mix.  But I decided to make part of the batter orange (in color) and part of it I added some cocoa.  This is what the cupcakes turned out like.

I made some chocolate frosting using the recipe on the Hershey's cocoa container.  The boys when to town.

It's all about the candy and sprinkles on top at our house!

Sam's got "The Bertolli" right there with him.

Didn't they all do a great job?  Oh, kidding, these are the ones I did.

Back to TWD Biscuits!  I decided just for the heck of it that after carving four nice sized pumpkins to just cut off the flesh from all the eyes, noses and mouths and cook the pumpkin and use it for the biscuits.  It made exactly one cup of pumpkin puree that I drained in a tea towel in the fridge overnight.  It was perfect puree.

But if you know me, I didn't just make regular pumpkin biscuits.  (No, I didn't add chocolate this time, although, hmmm? ;)

I wanted the biscuits to be kind of scone-like and I wanted to really get a sweet cinnamon flavor.  While again I didn't think the pumpkin taste was very noticeable, I did get some really nice "biscuits" that were even better the next day!

Here's the biscuits after I just brushed the tops with some cream and sprinkled some turbinado sugar on them.

 

Then I tried them as I sometimes think of biscuits--with butter and honey.

Good, but still not what I wanted. 

THIS is what I wanted them to be like.

I made a very simple icing with powdered sugar, a pinch of salt, a little cream and some cinnamon.  These were great!  Dorie mentions that these are good when completely cool.  I thought these were even great the next day.  They were flaky, but dense and moist and the icing added just the sweetness I was looking for.  I had read on the P&Q board that Laurie had asked Dorie about using pumpkin and she said to add some extra flour and sugar.  So I did. 

I iced 9 of the 15 biscuits.  I also added cinnamon to the dough, but not quite enough.  Would I make these again?  Probably, as they seemed to be a perfect, quick way to make a breakfast treat when there's just not enough time for cinnamon rolls.  So thanks again for the fun pick this week, Erin!  Check out the other TWD blogger's biscuits, too!

Come back later this week for some more amazing Rice Krispy Treats I've made.  In case you missed it, I recently made and posted these killer treats!  If you can imagine it, I've kicked them up another notch!