Bring on the Orange

I've been getting jealous of all of the great food that people have been posting lately...involving all of the fabulous produce that's in season right now! So this weekend Steve and I finally decided to get with the program and make up some fun fall food, taking advantage of some great veggies.

Steve gets all of the credit for his butternut squash risotto. I was a little bit skeptical of of this stuff only because I'm more of a picky eater and squash isn't the first thing I would grab for dinner. But this was fabulous! I'm so proud of him and how great this turned out, and thank goodness it was good because he made A LOT of it! Steve pulled his recipe off of Simply Recipes. I couldn't tell you anything about the process for making this, but I can vouch for the fabulous taste.

Since I knew Steve was going to be focusing on his butternut squash, I thought I'd make something that "felt fall" to accompany his dish. Also, since it was a first for me with butternut squash, I thought I'd go for another first and work with sweet potatoes, a vegetable I've never really had either. So I found a recipe for sweet potato biscuits.

After hunting around online, I ended up using a Paul Deen recipe. I know what you're thinking, "You must have used a pound of butter, right?" Wrong! Of the many recipes I came across, this actually took the least amount of butter and did not take Bisquick - score! My only complaint is that Paula instructs you to roll out the dough to 1/2-inch thick and claims you'll get 15-18 biscuits. Umm, no. Unless you're making mini biscuits this probably won't work. So I rolled mine out a bit thinner, so they weren't the big fluffy biscuits I would have liked. Next time I'll definitely double the recipe, but otherwise wouldn't change a thing - the taste was fabulous!

I'm so excited that I tried two new vegetables this weekend and loved 'em both! I can't wait to bust out a lot of cranberries and get some yummy pies made!

Sweet Potato Biscuits

by Paula Deen

1 1/4 C all purpose flour

2 T sugar

4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 C mashed cooked sweet potatoes

1/4 C softened butter
2 to 4 T milk (depending on the moisture of the potatoes)

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

Sift together the dry ingredients. In a separate, large bowl, mix the sweet potatoes and butter. Add the dry mixture to the potato mixture and mix to make a soft dough. Add milk a tablespoon at a time and continue to work together. Turn the dough onto a floured board and toss lightly until the outside of the dough looks smooth. Roll the dough out to 1/2-inch thick and cut with a biscuit cutter. Place the biscuits on a greased or lined cookie sheet and coat tops with melted butter. Bake for about 15 minutes. If the biscuits are browning too fast, lower the oven temperature.

Since I don't have a biscuit cutter, I used my scalloped circle cutter from my Wilton 101 piece set. Check out my review of this cookie cutter set on Sazze.com!