Here at Molly B and Me we know how to deal with leftovers. We’ve wrangled ragu out of old tomatoes, whipped waffles out of the dregs of a pumpkin pie can, even spun soufflé out a limp asparagus. We’re confident in our cookies, certain of our soups, and cocksure of our casseroles. Still, New Year’s Eve left us intimidated by our inundated refrigerator. Layers of holiday food filled our fridge, stretching back chronologically like bed rock to the very back of the fridge, which still held some expired pre-Christmas meal leftovers. We began with the first layer, New Year’s Eve.
My parents had invited some of their gourmet group friends over to ring in the New Year with grilled ribs and crème brulée (both of which did not make it to the leftover stage, unfortunately for me). My parent’s friends brought gourmet spinach salad and a shrimp platter, which would be perfect if my parents hadn’t already bought their own shrimp platter for the occasion. My mom also threw some sweet potatoes in the oven for the occasion… and forgot about them, at which point one those devilish legumes exploded over the oven covering it in burnt orange goo.
With those odds against me, I decided turn to my Southern brothers. After my efforts to use up the sweet potatoes in a breakfast hash still left me with two large sweet potatoes, I decided to sneak them into a crowd pleasing baked good, like biscuits. Instead of eating the shrimp platter, I decided to take the easy way out and make gumbo from scratch… and then I decided to run to the store and buy every ingredient for gumbo except for shrimp. By the end of the day (after many hours of much needed oven cleaning) I pulled the biscuits out of the oven and added the fully cooked shrimp to the gumbo. While there’s still a lot of fridge to get to, my cooking swagger has definitely been restored.
Sweet Potato Biscuits
2 baked sweet potato (chilled and pureed)
¾ cup milk
1 tbs. brown sugar
2½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
3 cups flour
½ cup cold butter
- Mix sweet potato milk and brown sugar in a bowl until smooth.
- Swift together flour, baking powder, and baking soda in a separate bowl.
- Using a pastry cutter, cut cold butter into dry ingredients until about the size of popcorn kernels.
- Mix wet ingredients into dry ingredients until they form a loose dough (add flour or milk as necessary)
- Using a rolling pin, roll out dough until it’s about a half inch thick, cut out as many biscuits as you can with a biscuit cutter, a mason jar, a juice glass, or whatever you have on hand.
- Bake biscuits for about 15 min. at 450 degrees
