Sweet Potato Biscuits

Still here. Still pregnant. This is a sentence I did not expect to be writing at forty weeks with twins, because statistically twins arrive early and approximately forty parenting articles I read at 3 AM confirmed this, and yet here we are. Owen and Nora are apparently perfectly content in their current arrangement. I have reorganized the nursery twice. I have made three lasagnas. I have nothing left to do except wait, which is not my natural state.

Patty is calling twice a day now, the 7:15 check-in and a new evening call around 6 PM she has introduced without comment. Ryan is on day shifts and home at night, which means I sleep better in the way that having another person in the bed when you are this pregnant improves sleep by approximately forty percent. He has been doing all the dishes. I did not ask. He just started doing them.

My sub called this week to ask about one of my students. Dakota has a particular relationship with transitions and needs about seven warnings before any activity change. I walked her through it and felt the specific pride and grief of someone who loves a job and is leaving it temporarily. I will be back in the fall, and Dakota will have moved to fifth grade, and I will have a new class. For now I carry a small worry for all of them the way I carry everything: alongside everything else.

Cooking this week has been limited to what I can do in twenty minutes or less. I made a sheet pan of roasted vegetables, sweet potato, broccoli, chickpeas, olive oil, cumin, smoked paprika, and ate it on top of rice for three days running. Everything from Aldi. Simple and it requires nothing of me except turning the oven to 425 and setting a timer. Forty weeks pregnant and I am still finding ways to cook real food, which feels like the only victory currently available to me.

The sheet pan of roasted sweet potatoes I’d been eating all week got me thinking—if I was going to have the oven at 425 anyway, and if reorganizing the nursery a third time was genuinely off the table, I might as well do something with those sweet potatoes beyond rice bowls. Sweet Potato Biscuits turned out to be exactly the kind of low-stakes, hands-in-the-dough project that forty weeks of waiting called for: just enough to feel like an accomplishment, simple enough that I could sit down halfway through and not lose anything. Owen and Nora can stay put a little longer. I have biscuits now.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 14 min | Total Time: 29 min | Servings: 10 biscuits

Ingredients

1 cup mashed sweet potato (from 1 medium roasted or microwaved sweet potato, cooled)
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
1/3 cup cold buttermilk, plus more for brushing

Instructions

Preheat. Preheat your oven to 425°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Mix dry ingredients. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and black pepper.
Cut in the butter. Add the cold butter cubes and work them into the flour mixture with your fingertips or a pastry cutter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbles with some pea-sized pieces remaining. Do not overwork.
Add sweet potato and buttermilk. Add the mashed sweet potato and buttermilk. Stir gently with a fork just until the dough comes together—it will be slightly sticky. Stop as soon as no dry flour remains.
Shape the biscuits. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and pat it to about 3/4-inch thickness. Use a 2 1/2-inch round cutter or the rim of a glass to cut out biscuits. Press straight down without twisting. Re-pat scraps once to cut additional biscuits.
Bake. Place biscuits on the prepared baking sheet so they are just touching. Brush tops lightly with buttermilk. Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, until the tops are golden and the biscuits have risen.
Serve warm. Let cool for 5 minutes on the pan, then serve warm with butter, honey, or alongside a bowl of soup.

Nutrition (per serving)

Sweet Potato Biscuits — The One Thing I Could Still Make at Forty Weeks