Oh sweet potato, how I do love you....

Here’s a perfect story for our inaugural post.  It epitomizes how we cook, live, and feel about food.  

So I apparently have a thing for sweet potatoes.  I really like sweet potatoes.  Not only are they yummy, but good for you too!  I have been buying them every week at the store.  Due to my mom-nesia, I forget every week that I already have a bunch at home.  So, I probably had around 5 lbs. to begin with in our hanging basket.  Of course, this week sweet potatoes are on sale for 30 cents a pound and like a jackass, I buy another 6 lbs. (for only a buck 80!)  Now I get home and I realize I now have more than 10 pounds of sweet potatoes.  After informing my husband that we will be eating sweet potatoes with every meal for the next month, I set about trying to figure out what to do with these little gems.  

I went online and found this website (sweetpotato.org) that had some great recipes for all things sweet potato.  We are going camping this weekend so I decided on some sweet potato muffins for some easy breakfast and snacks.  Coincidentally, we had a play date here at the house yesterday and every single child here took and apple as a snack and took 5-7 bites out of it.  I found little apple carcasses here and there.  Funny thing about these apples is that no one will eat it after even one bite has been taken out of it. I could not waste all these apples so I decided to throw them in the muffins. 

 One of the great things about sweet potatoes is that you can microwave them and they come out great.  They probably aren’t as sweet and caramelized as if you did them in the oven, but they are quick and taste good.  I’d say 9-10 minutes on high for 3-4 potatoes, depending on your microwave.  Don’t forget to poke some holes with a fork all over the potato or you will have exploded potato in your microwave.  Also, turn them over once about halfway through cooking them.  You can freeze the cooked potato too.  A lot of moms will cook and freeze sweet potatoes in ice cube trays for use as baby food.  

Anyway, yay sweet potatoes!

Here’s the recipe: 

The original called for ½ cup light molasses and all I had was really dark molasses.  I decided to use ¼ of the dark molasses and ¼ honey.  Also, the original didn’t add any other sweetener (and the first batch was bleh) so in this recipe I am adding some sugar.  

2-3 sweet potatoes (1 ¼ pounds) baked, tender, and peeled

2 eggs

½ cup milk

¼ cup unsulfured molasses

¼ cup honey

3 T butter

¾ cup sugar (use white or brown, your call)

1 ¼ cup all purpose flour

½ cup whole-wheat flour

1 t baking powder

1 t ground cinnamon

¾ t salt

½ t ground ginger

Optional: 1 cup minced apples

 Preheat oven to 375˚ F.  Prepare muffin tins with oil or cooking spray.  

If your potatoes are stringy, puree with hand blender or food processor.  Place 1 cup sweet potatoes in bowl or mixer.  Add and blend in eggs, then milk, molasses, honey, sugar, and butter.  When these are mixed, add dry ingredients.  Add apples at end if desired.  Fill muffin cups about 2/3 full with batter.  Bake until springy to touch and a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, about 25-30 minutes. Transfer to rack and let cool.  

  Taste tester Mead trying out the batter (naked of course.)

These came out pretty good, though they are very dense.  And like I said, they definitely needed some more sugar.  My test kitchen tasters are deliberating over whether they like them or not.  And by that I mean they are taking one bite out of each muffin they grab and then abandoning them somewhere for me to find later.