Cooked sweet potato adds body and flavor to these biscuits, but they are more savory than sweet—just right for buttering and sopping up gravy of any kind. Try them with Not Really Son-of-a-Bitch Stew (page 221), Tom Perini’s Chicken-fried Steak (page 227), or Beer-braised Short Ribs (page 222).

Ingredients

　　3 cups all-purpose flour

　　1 tablespoon baking powder

　　1 teaspoon salt

　　1 tablespoon sugar

　　1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces

　　1 1/4 cups mashed cooked sweet potatoes (about 1 medium sweet potato)

　　1/4 cup buttermilk

　　1/4 cup heavy whipping cream

　　Butter, at room temperature. for accompaniment

　　Preheat the oven 400°F. Grease a baking sheet with butter or cooking spray. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar until combined. Add the chilled butter and work with your hands or a pastry cutter until the mixture is crumbly with visible bits of butter about the size of baby peas. Lightly work in the sweet potato; add the buttermilk and cream, mixing just until the dough can be formed into a ball. On a floured work surface, lightly press the dough into a disk about 1 1/4 inches thick. Using a 3-inch biscuit cutter dipped in flour, cut out biscuits as close together as possible. Mold the scraps into a small disk of the same thickness and cut out the rest. Place on the prepared baking sheet and bake until the biscuits are light golden brown, 12 to 15 minutes. Serve hot with butter.

　　Pastry Queen Parties by Rebecca Rather and Alison Oresman. Copyright © 2009 Rebecca Rather and Alison Oresman. Published by Ten Speed Press. All Rights Reserved.A pastry chef, restaurateur, and cookbook author, native Texan Rebecca Rather has been proprietor of the Rather Sweet Bakery and Café since 1999. Open for breakfast and lunch daily, Rather Sweet has a fiercely loyal cadre of regulars who populate the café’s sunlit tables each day. In 2007, Rebecca opened her eponymous restaurant, serving dinner nightly, just a few blocks from the café.  Rebecca is the author of THE PASTRY QUEEN, and has been featured in Texas Monthly, Gourmet, Ladies Home Journal, Food & Wine, Southern Living, Chocolatier, Saveur, and O, The Oprah Magazine. When she isn’t in the bakery or on horseback, Rebecca enjoys the sweet life in Fredericksburg, where she tends to her beloved backyard garden and menagerie, and eagerly awaits visits from her college-age daughter, Frances.Alison Oresman has worked as a journalist for more than twenty years. She has written and edited for newspapers in Wyoming, Florida, and Washington State. As an entertainment editor for the Miami Herald, she oversaw the paper’s restaurant coverage and wrote a weekly column as a restaurant critic. After settling in Washington State, she also covered restaurants in the greater Seattle area as a critic with a weekly column. A dedicated home baker, Alison is often in the kitchen when she isn't writing. Alison lives in Bellevue, Washington, with her husband, Warren, and their children, Danny and Callie.