Hattie’s Sweet Potato Biscuits

1 ¼ Cups of Better for Bread Flour
1 Cup Wheat Flour
1 teaspoon of salt
2 ½ Tablespoons of Baking Powder
½ Tablespoon of Baking Soda
2 Tablespoons of Hunter Pumpkin Spice
Two teaspoons of Cinnamon
¼ Cup Brown Sugar
One small about one Cup mashed sweet potato or red yam
¾ Cup evaporated milk (I use PET brand evaporated brand, regular milk will do)
Six Tablespoons of Butter

Ahead of Time
Boil sweet potato or yam until very soft (can be refrigerated the night before)
Set out butter to soften

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
In a medium size bowl, whisk or stir all dry ingredients including sugar very well.
Peal Potato and mash with large spoon against edge of a large bowl
In the large bowl, pour in the milk and mix well. Put aside.
In the medium bowl, cut in the softened butter with one or two table knife into the flour mixture until no large lumps of butter remain.
Pour flour mixture into large bowl with sweet potato mixture.

Stir with spoon until mixture makes one large ball. If took sticky, add more white flour. If too thick, at a little more milk. Pat a little flour on your hands to handle dough. When perfect, you can handle dough in your hands and make a nice ball. Because a sweet potato is never the name size, this part is artwork to find the right consistency of the dough that you can handle without you hands getting too messy.

Put a sheet of wax paper down (or you can just roll the dough with a rolling pin, but that might be more messy). Put the ball of dough on it. Place another sheet of wax paper on top, then just pat down with your hands to about a ½ inch circle of dough.

Spray Pam in the bottom of your baking dish or melt butter in the bottom of the baking dish.
Use a glass or biscuit cutter to cut out biscuits and place in baking dish.

Either place in refrigerator for baking later (will last two to three days)

Bake at 400 degrees for 28 minutes.

Hattie’s Sweet Potato Pancakes

Boil sweet potato until very soft.
Heat electric griddle to 375 degrees.
Peel sweet potato
In a small bowl, mesh a small sweet potato or red yam (about 1/3 of a large sweet potato with a large spoon.
Mix in Aunt Jemima Original Pancake Mix and prepare as directed on box, using olive oil (Note: Regular oil will work just fine too. If you use melted butter for the oil, the pancakes will be more golden)
Substitute PET brand evaporated milk for regular milk in recipe.
Stir in two teaspoons of Hunter’s Pumpkin Spice.

If pancake batter is too thick, add more milk. Fat pancakes mean you need to add more milk to batter.

Turn pancakes when they bubble and bottoms are brown.
Great pancakes are only turned one time.

Pancakes can be kept in refrigerator for two days and reheated.
Makes about twelve pancakes.
Try serving with Ocean Spray cranberry sauce instead of maple syrup, both ways are great

Hattie’s Cornbread

Pre-heat over to 400 degree.
Melt 4 Tablespoons (½ stick of butter) in over (Do not brown)

In a small to medium size bowl, mix dry ingredients together.
1 Cup Flour
½ Cup Yellow Cornmeal
3 Tablespoons of Sugar
1 Tablespoon of Baking Powder
1 teaspoon of salt

Then stir in one egg, melted butter and PET brand evaporated milk and stir until desired constancy about one cup.

Bake in over for about twenty-five minutes.

Hattie’s Cloverleaf Yeast Rolls

Yellow Le creuset pot

When you start cooking for the day or the night before leave butter out so it can soften, this is important.

Assemble your food processor with the chopping blade. Hattie uses the Cuisinart 11-Cup Food Processor Chopping Blade DLC-861TX. It comes standard with the 11-Cup Cuisinart food processor.

The following ingredients will be needed:

½ Cup warm water
½ Cup scalded, the cooled milk
1/3 Cup softened butter
1 package active dry yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg
½ Cup sugar
4 Cups Better for Bread flour (not self-rising flour, for wheat rolls use two Cups Wheat flour and two Cups Better for Bread Flour).

First, scald the milk then let it cool.

Then grease a large bowl with softened butter or shortening.

Next, run warm tap water over your hand. Water that is too hot will kill the yeast while water that is too cold will not allow the yeast to rise properly. That’s 105 to 115 degrees. Pour ½ Cup of water into the large mixing bowl of the food processor. Stir in the active yeast with a spoon. Then add the cooled milk.

After that, put in the six and a half Tablespoons of softened butter (most brands label Tablespoons on the wrappers for sticks of butter cut, just cut into about six pieces and drop into the mixing bowl). Then put in the salt, egg, sugar (1/3 Cup of sugar will work, but Hattie likes her rolls a little sweeter) and two Cups of flour. Mix until the batter is smooth — then add another two cups all at once.

If things go well with the final mixing, the food processor will semi-clean the bowl for you with the roll dough forming a ball that you can lift out of the mixing bowl. But the amount of flour needed is not exact. If it the blades are hard to turn, you need to add more flour until the ball forms. If the food processor motor over heats and stops, because you needed more flour and the dough was too hard to turn, just wait until the motor cools down. Eventually, the motor will start again.

Hattie uses the 11 Cup Cuisinart food processor and has used it for over thirty years. It has always come back to service for her without the need for repair. If the motor spots, be patient.

Pat the dough into a nice ball and place in the greased bowl. Put the dough in the refrigerator for 6-8 hours or overnight for the dough to double in size. The dough can remain in the refrigerator up to three days before use.

When ready to shape the rolls, start by greasing one twelve-cup muffin and and one six-cup muffin pan. Roll the refrigerated dough into 1-inch small balls. Place three ball into each of the muffin Cups. Brush tops with melted butter. Allow the rolls to rise again for about two-four hours, depending on how warm the kitchen is.

When ready to bake, pre-heat the oven to 400 degree. Bake the rolls for 17 minutes exactly. Use a timer. It only takes a couple of minutes for the rolls to burn, if you leave then in for too long. Brush the tops of the rolls with melted butter again.

Hattie’s Cornbread Dressing

Preparing Hattie’s cornbread stuffing is more of an art, than a precise execution. Depends on how much you’re making. Sorry. You’re going to have to wing this using all of the basic ingredients.

2-3 batched of Hattie’s cornbread. Ca be prepared up three days in advance and refrigerated.
Whole Wheat Honey Bread (to be toasted)
5 large Spanish onions or 7-9 small onions.
3-5 large green bell papers
3-4 large bunches of celery
Lawry’s Seasoning Salt
Lawry’s Seasoned Peper
Rubbed Sage (Opened less than one year)
6-10 cans of Pet Milk (low fat evaporated milk, if you can find it)
A little sugar
Butter (She now uses a butter/olive oil blend as a healthier choice)

A package chicken gizzards and livers (just use the livers, neck and gizzards from the turkey if you can’t find the chicken gizzards and use their season broth.

First step is to chop up the onions first (save some onions, celery and bell beepers for roasting your turkey); put in a plastic bag. Chop up the celery for the dressing; put in a bag. Chop up the bell peppers; put in a bag. Hattie uses her food processor to do all of the fine chopping. She remembers doing it by hand as a kid. That was hard work. If you don’t have a food processor, consider buying one. Hattie wouldn’t consider doing it by many anymore. It a lot of time to do it that way. She normally does this two night before the big dinner and refrigerate.

The evening to morning the dressing is made, put the turkey heart, liver, and neck in a large pot with the extra chicken livers and gizzards. Put in some chopped celery, onions and bell peppers. The season with salt and pepper. At a low boil, cook until done. Turn off and allow to cool a little. Chop up in food processor or by hand. Put aside.

In a very large skillet, put in butter. Melt it. The put in most of the celery. The key to Hattie’s dressing is a lot of celery. That’s way she always buys at least three bunches of it. Add chopped onion. Should be twice as much celery as onion. Add bell pepper. Should be less than the onion added, maybe a lot less if you don’t like bell peppers. Sauté until soft, but not browned.

In a very large pot or oversized bowl, crumble up cornbread and toasted wheat bread (8-10 slices). Added sautéed onion, celery and bell peppers; then add in the chopped turkey and chicken pieces. The use the seasoned salt and pepper to taste. Added the rubbed sage seasoning, more than you think. At least a fourth of a small can. Pour in several cans of Pet Milk with some of the chicken/turkey broth. Add a little sugar, if desired. Taste. Continue seasoning until the desired taste is achieved. Then stir in two or three raw eggs. The mixture should be soupy.

Grease pans that will be used to cook the dressing. Hattie makes more than one pan so she always has fresh dressing ready for the left over turkey and late arriving dinner guests.

Either bake the dressing then at 375 and put in the refrigerator to heat on later or just put in the refrigerator to cook later. Frozen dressing will be good for weeks. Refrigerated dressing is good for about three days.

Because of the use of the raw eggs and soupy mixture, she never uses her dressing as a stuffing for her turkey. She after seasoning the cavity of her turkey with celery, onions and bell peppers. This time she uses more onions than anything else and puts some butter in the cavity. Then pour melted butter over the turkey and season the outside of the turkey with seasoned salt, seasoned pepper and paprika. Put in a meat thermometer, wrap in foil and bake at 425 until done. Check temperature after three hours, cooking time will vary greatly based on size of turkey.