Sweet Potato Biscuits with Cane Syrup Butter

My grandmother Evangeline made these biscuits every Thanksgiving morning before the sun came up. The sweet potatoes came from her garden, dug the week before and cured in the shed until their sugars concentrated. She'd roast them in the wood-burning oven while she mixed the dough, and by the time the family arrived, the whole house smelled like brown butter and warm spices.

The secret to these biscuits is twofold. First, roast your sweet potato until it's almost caramelized. Boiling washes away flavor and adds water you don't want. Second, keep everything cold and work the dough as little as possible. Biscuit making rewards a light hand and punishes fussiness.

That cane syrup butter is pure Louisiana. Steen's has been pressing sugarcane in Abbeville since 1910, and nothing else tastes quite the same. It's darker than honey, less cloying than molasses, with a complexity that reminds you of roasted nuts and burnt sugar edges. Whipped into good butter with a touch of salt, it transforms an already wonderful biscuit into something you'll dream about.

At Lagniappe, we serve these biscuits at Sunday brunch, and people order them by the basket. They come out of the oven, get brushed with butter, and disappear before they've had time to cool. That's exactly as it should be.