Brownies. Can you ever really go wrong with brownies? Simple to make, delicious, so many varieties, they’re a wonderful sweet treat. I love a good blondie every now and again, as well as any brownie with lots of nuts, a snickers inspired one blew me away once. However, traditional brownies can often contain quite a lot of sugar and butter and therefore I wanted to try and create a healthier alternative.
Bring forward sweet potato brownies! I discovered sweet potato brownies a few years ago and was pretty excited to test them out. I followed a recipe I found online and remember that I wasn’t able to find all the ingredients as unfortunately my local shop didn’t store them so I thought I would improvise, thinking how wrong can these turn out? Turns out, pretty badly! In fact, they kind of tasted like soil, (or what I imagine soil to taste like!) They were super dry, didn’t cook very well and definitely didn’t leave the desired aftertaste. I should have tried the recipe again but for some reason I didn’t and so here we are a few years later and I’m giving them another go.
One thing that inspired me to test these out was I recently purchased a delicious cocoa powder, Naturya organic brand, and also not too long ago I bought a sweet potato brownie from Planet Organic and it was so good. I ate it in store and bought two more to take home with me (definitely worth a try!) I’ve been meaning to try and recreate it ever since so decided to finally give it a go and luckily these taste lovely.
These brownies are so simple to make, and use hardly any ingredients. You can also adapt the ingredients for your taste buds, if you want to make them sweeter (i.e add more maple syrup) or if you would rather not use eggs, you can use more dates and ground almonds. I used eggs in this recipe but might give them a go without next time and will let you know how they go. The only thing I will say about this recipe is that the brownies did turn out a bit crumbly when I cut into them and that was probably my own fault for not giving them a bit more time to cool. Otherwise the taste is great, they are super morish but also filling and are very satisfying. Perfect with a nice cup of tea, ice cream or an expresso martini, the choice is all yours!
Prep time: 15 mins (in addition to the sweet potatoes which need 45 mins to cook)
Baking time: 20 – 25 mins
Makes: Approx 16 brownies
Ingredients
300g Sweet potatoes
9 Medjool Dates, pitted
2 eggs
1 tbsp maple syrup
1 tbsp vanilla extract
4 tbsp Cacao Powder
2 tbsp ground almonds
1 heaped tsp baking powder
50g walnuts
50g pecans
A little coconut oil to grease the baking tin
A little icing sugar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 180C / 355F and line a baking tin (20cm) with a little coconut oil and baking paper.
- Peel the sweet potatoes, pierce a few times with a fork and bake in the oven for 45 minutes.
- Let the sweet potatoes cool then add the mash sweet potato and dates to a blender/food processor and blend together until you get a soft smooth mixture.
- Transfer the mixture into a big mixing bowl, add the eggs, maple syrup and vanilla extract and stir together.
- In another bowl, combine the cocoa powder, ground almonds and baking powder together. I used a hand whisk to stir it altogether.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients in the big mixing bowl and combine together.
- Add the walnuts and pecans and stir altogether with a wooden spoon.
- Pour the mixture into the lined baking tin and bake for 20 – 25 minutes, check at 20mins and if the knife comes out clean they are ready, if not, leave in for a further 5 minutes.
- Leave to cool for ten minutes before removing from the tin.
- Sprinkle some icing sugar on and enjoy!
