Sweet potato pancakes

Is it too late to talk about this past Memorial Day weekend?  Where does the time go! It's shaping up to be a busy week of catch-up following the nice, leisurely 3 days of family time. Three-day weekends are so right - you get so much done and that constant sense of rushing, of not having enough time, fades away.  It made me really appreciate how lucky we are, and thankful to all the service personnel who protect our precious freedoms so we can enjoy such great lives.  

Weather-wise, the Memorial weekend was a mixed bag but we did manage to fire up the grill on Sunday for the first time this year, which was great fun.  I churned my first batch of ice cream of the season, a mint Oreo flavor requested by the little man; it was a big hit and vanished quickly as ice cream usually does.  I also went to the farmer's market again on Sunday and scored some sashimi-grade tuna to make my first poke bowl!

In between that, we savored 3 consecutive leisurely weekend breakfasts and I got to try a new pancake recipe during one of those.  These are sweet potato pancakes, a recipe I spotted in a new cookbook, American Girl in London.  It caught my eye given my love of sweet potatoes and my constant interest in finding new breakfast foods to put on the table.

I'm constantly roasting sweet potatoes for lunch or dinner so it was no sweat to set one aside to mash up for these pancakes.  They're also made with some whole milk yogurt, which I also happened to have on hand after baking a couple batches of banana bread.  

At their core, these sweet potato pancakes turned out fluffy (I used the trick I learned recently of stirring the egg white into the batter at the end of mixing) and super moist, almost custardy, in texture.  The original recipe does not call for any additional sugar, relying on just the natural sweetness from the sweet potatoes.  I tried it that way but in retrospect, I would add a tablespoon or so of sugar to the batter to better offset the tang from the yogurt.  That said, a generous douse of maple syrup does the trick of adding sweetness.

Do you like sweet potato or pumpkin pie?  Or those warm Thanksgiving flavors and spices? This will likely remind you of that because of a touch of both cinnamon and nutmeg in the pancakes.  Some, like my son, may not be a big fan so it's good to know what to expect going in.  For my husband and I, these soft pancakes were a fun thing to try and we had no problems cleaning our plates.  I particularly liked taking a bite with some toasted walnut because they add so much welcome flavor and a crunch.

It's always good to try new things, even if they're not home runs for everyone at the table each time.  Hopefully, we learn it's important to simply welcome different things and to widen our palate a little bit.

Sweet potato-chocolate chunk muffins

I had to try these muffins because they combine two of my favorite things: sweet potatoes and chocolate!  On top of that, they are super easy to make.  If you roast and eat as many sweet potatoes as I do, set some aside to give these muffins a try. I'm happy I did!

These muffins are made with mashed roasted sweet potatoes (which basically replaces the liquid - typically milk or buttermilk - in the recipe), olive oil, and whole wheat flour (I used my standard white whole wheat flour), which gives the muffins a nice nutty flavor and texture.  Possibly the best part?  Bittersweet chocolate chunks stirred into the batter essentially guarantees that the muffins will be a hit.  I can now officially say that sweet potatoes and chocolate go very well together!  

The sweet potato part of the muffins might not jump out at you but much like baking with pumpkin puree, it adds moisture, subtle sweetness, and combines nicely with a touch of cinnamon.  It also adds a nice golden color and visuals are important when it comes to eating, right?  My family and I really enjoyed them and I'm happy to include them in my muffin-making rotation.  

Because we had just polished off a batch of double chocolate muffins (I think of those as our "house muffins"), I made a small batch of six of these to try them out.  I wouldn't hesitate to make an even dozen next time because these go down easy and as we all know, homemade muffins are much loved and appreciated.  I'm always happy when the cookie jar is filled and the cake dome has some muffins tucked inside.

Sweet potato biscuits

Chalk this up to a love of sweet potatoes.  It's only natural we want to find ways to use/cook/eat our favorite ingredients.  Because I love sweet potatoes (a whole lot), I've been wanting to make sweet potato biscuits since I saw them on a cooking show.

The orange hue of these biscuits doesn't come from cheddar; it's from sweet potatoes, mashed and stirred together with buttermilk as the wet ingredients that go into an otherwise rather classic buttermilk biscuit formula.  

I meant to make these around Thanksgiving but didn't get around to it but since I kept thinking about them, I just had to make it happen.  Biscuit making (as well as scone dough, pie dough-making, etc.) makes me a little nervous.  There's often that point when I turn the dough out and it's so crumbly, I wonder how I'll ever bring it together, be able to cut out rounds, and bake them in one piece!  I had that moment here but as it usually happens, things work out and I'm very happy these biscuits turned out well in the end.  

They've got the classic crunchy, buttery sides and edges that's just so hard to stop eating, and as for the sweet potato part - it brings a slight sweetness into the picture. I don't know if you'd be able to identify the taste of sweet potatoes specifically (I'd have to say, probably not...) but it adds that little sweetness.  I also like the color and hopefully, there's some goodness to be had from the nutrients from the sweet potato.

I baked half the batch and froze the rest for another night.  I see soup, with a side of sweet potato biscuits, for dinner in the near future.