Sweet Potato Paleo Muffin Recipe

August 18, 2015

I don’t own a measuring spoon.

In the beginning it wasn't intentional. I had misplaced the ones that I did own. But weird as it sounds, I found this freedom from measurement liberating. With all the other things I obsess and perfect over in my life, cooking should be the one thing I can do without rules. Everything I need, I can get from my silverware or the pinch of my fingers.

When I first taught myself to cook, I followed recipes as if it was the word of God. I could not begin the process until I had spent at least an hour looking for the perfect recipe. And then I might change my mind 10 more times. And then, if I was missing one ingredient, I'd change my mind 10 more.

But as I got more comfortable, I realized how much more freeing it was to close out of the recipe on my phone, drop the measuring spoon, and just eyeball it.

This is all well and good for cooking. But they tell me (you know, the imaginary kitchen police) that this approach can’t be done for baking.

Baking requires formulas. Baking requires science. And baking most definitely requires measuring spoons.

Umm, respectfully, I say, F that.

I baked the meanest muffins this weekend (mean as in AWESOME), and I totally ignored the rules. Yes, I did consult a few recipes first (to get inspired), but then I just went for it.

I realize that it may take awhile for newbie cooks to get to this point. Obviously for me it took years of trial and error and obsessing. Which is why, before I dive into the recipe, I wanted to share with you a post that I did awhile back that helped me understand why formulas are used in baking – cookies specifically. If I could understand that, then I could be creative within the parameters of the rules. I highly recommend reading it it if you would like to come up with your own recipes:

Healthy Stacey Cookie Creation Guide

Now, this time around, I didn't make cookies. I made muffins. But the process wasn't much different than cookies. (I'm sure many bakers would disagree with me)….

You've got your wet ingredients, your dry ingredients and your main ingredient – what creates the flavor. You mix them up seperately, then you mix them together. Then add in any finishing touches (i.e. a chocolate chip or a dried berry).

I knew I wanted something sweet. But not too sweet; something I could eat for breakfast, but also dessert. I had oodles of sweet potatoes that needed to be used before they went bad. And I wanted to use ingredients that boost the nutrition factor up a few notches.

And thus, Sweet Potato Paleo Muffins were born! Complete with nutrient-packed sweet potatoes, anti-inflammatory turmeric and healthy-fat coconut oil. Naturally sweetened with dates and a bit of maple syrup. And, best of all, the perfect dense/moist texture with just enough sweet to satisfy that nagging tooth.

Below is the recipe.

I realize the irony here that I’m writing a post about not following a recipe by giving you a recipe. But what I want you to do is feel inspired by the possibility that you don’t have to follow it to a T. You can be a little loose, and have a lot more fun.

So follow it. Don’t follow it. But whatever you do, don’t overthink it. Just test the batter as you go, add more good-tasting things if it’s not tasting good enough (your batter is a pretty heavy indicator of your final product), use common sense, and enjoy the process.

Sweet Potato Muffins Recipe

Ingredients:

6 pasture-raised eggs
1/2 cup butter, clarified butter/ghee, or coconut oil, melted – I like this one
1 teaspoon pure star anise extract (because that’s what I had – feel free to use vanilla extract)
1 cup of dates
¼ cup of maple syrup
3 cups shredded sweet potatoes
¼ cup coconut flour
¼ cup arrowroot flour
pinch of sea salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
optional: 1/4 cup of some fun mix-in – dried cranberries, dried cherries, chocolate chiiiips!

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Put your cup of dates in a glass of water. You will let them soak for about the amount of time it will take you to do the next steps before you need to add in your dates (10 minutes or so).
Prep your counter ahead of time with the following: 1 dry bowl (bowl for dry ingredients), 1 wet bowl (just guess what this one’s for), a muffin tin or muffin liners spread with coconut oil or butter so the batter doesn’t stick, snd a food processor.
Pulverize the sweet potatoes in a food processor with a shredder. It took me about 10 sweet potatoes, but I was using the organic Trader Joe’s sweet potatoes which are unusually small. Unload them to a seperate bowl (you'll be needing the food processor for the dates).
Mix together the dry ingredients: coconut flour, arrowroot flour, sea salt, baking soda, turmeric and cinnamon.
Whisk eggs in wet bowl.
Time to take care of your dates! Drain half the water out of the glass of dates. Throw them in your food processor (no reason to rinse out the sweet potatoes mess; it’s all going the same place). Pulse until it’s a smooth liquid.
Add in melted butter/oil, anise (or vanilla) extract, maple syrup and date syrup.
Mix dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.
Fold in shredded sweet potatoes.
Add in raisins, cranberries, chocolate chips – whatever floats your boat!
Spoon the batter into your muffin tins or your muffin liners.
Pop in oven for 25 minutes. Take out, check them with a toothpick to see if it comes out clean. Most likely, you’ll need 5-10 more minutes. But I’d rather you be safe than sorry.
Once done, put on an upside down plate (or a cooling rack if you’re fancy like that). Do your darndest to wait until it cools off to eat one.

Much Love,

Like what you read today? Think somebody else would like to learn how to create their own cookie recipe or make a mean sweet potato muffin? See those cute little social shapes underneath this post? They're for sharing! Click one to post to Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or comment right here on the blog. I would love to hear from you.

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Pumpkin Mookies for Santa

December 8, 2014

I love Christmas. A lot. Always have. Always will.

I grew up with a Christmas-crazed mom who allowed me – no, encouraged me – to be a kid at Christmas time. In college, I came home to Christmas decorations, hot cocoa and all-night Christmas movie marathons. After college, I moved back home, and looked forward to the time of year where I could pretend to be a kid again and forget about the stresses of the real world. And then, I moved in with my best friends who were just as happy to pretend to be a kid with me during the holidays.

This year, things feel a little different. I live with my boyfriend in our grown-up apartment. We have real furniture like a grown-up couch and a grown-up coffee table. For the first time, I really do feel like an adult. Sure, there's still the part of me that knows that "being a kid" again is okay. But I'm really embracing – and enjoying – this new stage of my life. With that said, ever since the holiday season began, I’ve been trying to figure out…

How do I celebrate Christmas as a grown-up?

I don't have kids yet. And I don't have any young cousins or nieces or nephews in the country. I am not concerned if Santa brings me anything for Christmas. And although I do love giving gifts, I am getting annoyed with all of the Black Fridays, Cyber Mondays and relentless Christmas advertising directed towards children. It all feels like a lot of noise, and very little joy.

But today, I think I figured it out. I am currently sitting on my grown-up couch, with a mini Christmas tree to my left, a fireplace adorned with our very own stockings up front, white twinkling lights wrapped around our exposed ventilation system above, and homemade cookies and coconut milk on my grown-up coffee table ahead. My boyfriend and I spent the morning putting them up together while listening to a Christmas playlist we made the night before over a glass of wine. It's all very simple. But I am so blissfully happy. This is all I need for it to feel like Christmas.

With that said, here are the cookies I made for Santa. Yes, I know it's only December 7th, but I can do whatever I want. It's my Christmas.

Pumpkin Mookies

Coconut flour – although awesome – is a finicky ingredient. Because it’s dense, it soaks up a lot of moisture, making the final product a little more muffin-like. Lucky for me, my Mom gave me this fantastic muffin tin that she wasn’t getting any use out of. And if you remember from my fall post, I went a little overboard on pumpkin puree for fall. So as much as I’d like to get busy with gingerbread, peppermint and eggnog, Santa will have to settle for pumpkin. The final product is a little spicy, a little creamy and a lot of chewy. Oh yeah, and pretty darn good for you. You’re welcome, Santa.

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup of pumpkin puree
½ cup of maple syrup
1 banana
1 egg
½ cup of almond floud
¼ cup of coconut flour
¼ cup of tapioca starch
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tablespoon pumpkin spice
Chocolate chips to top

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Put pumpkin, maple syrup, banana and egg in a bowl and beat together with a mixer.
In a separate bowl, combine flours, baking soda and pumpkin spice.
Pour dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.
Mix together with hand mixer until you have a dough-like texture.
Spoon dough into your muffin tin.
Strategically top the muffins with as many chocolate chips as you see fit.
Stick in the oven for 10-12 minutes.
Enjoy with a cold glass of coconut milk in front of a warm fire.

Lessons From A Recipe FAIL + Coconut Almond Sweet Potato Spread Recipe

September 15, 2014

The other night I decided to attempt a new homemade protein bar recipe. Per usual, I took a perfectly good recipe from Oh She Glows and replaced it with my own ingredients, hoping I could make it tastier and more fitting to my personal preferences.

I was dying to try the coconut flour that I had bought from Trader Joe’s weeks ago. So I used this paleo-friendly flour instead of Angela’s recommended rolled oat flour. With its wide-array of health benefits, I use coconut in nearly every aspect of my life: as a deep conditioner for my hair, as a moisturizer and KP treatment on my body, and in the majority of my cooking. Why not add it to my baking, right?

WRONG.

Before you go playing with coconut flour, know that it is much denser than most flours. Because of this, it literally soaks up any wet ingredient in your recipe until all of the moisture is gone.

I should have seen it as a big red flag when I mixed my ingredients together and my usual gooey mixture was powdery and dry. But I was in denial about wasting all of these good quality ingredients (Medjool dates, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, etc.).

So I yelled F**k! really loud and kept on trucking.

The end product looked something like a desert land. A vast coconut, pumpkin, sesame seed desert land. When I tried to cut them into bars, they literally burst into powder (kind of like when Clark Griswold cut into the holiday turkey that cousin Eddie cooked). The taste wasn’t horrible. Just incredibly dry, crumbly and inconvenient. So I decided to keep it and use it as a topping to yogurt. Not bad for a crunchy topping. But still, not a recipe worth trying again.

Whenever I ruin a recipe or burn a dish, I get incredibly frustrated and immediately start hunting through my refrigerator to find something to satisfy my craving. Well, the recipe gods were upon me that evening because, out of the coconut desert ruins, I created a delicious new recipe that just might become a new favorite. I’d like to present to you…

Coconut Almond Sweet Potato Spread

This snack is for when you have that peanut butter/nut butter craving (a weekly thing for me), but want to avoid spreading it on gluten-ous bread. It may seem decadent (and it kind of is), but it’s actually pretty damn good for you. Among its zillions of health benefits, coconut oil increases energy expenditure, helping you kill more fat. Sweet potatoes offer iron which plays an important role in stress reduction (again, among tons of other health benefits). But most importantly for me after my recipe FAIL, I felt super satisfied when I was done eating my inventive (slightly weird) snack.

Note: I am instructing you to make way more sweet potatoes than you need because it’s really nice to have them on hand for a quick and awesomely healthy snack.

Ingredients:

3 sweet potatoes or yams (you’ll just need 1 for this specific purpose; the rest are for you to enjoy on-the-go.)
2-3 tsp. coconut oil
1 tbsp. almond butter, crunchy and unsalted
Dash of cinnamon
Dash of salt and pepper
Tiny dash of cayenne powder (optional, for people who like a kick)
Shredded coconut for topping (optional)
Mary’s Gone Crackers, to serve on

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Put a piece of parchment paper on a baking sheet.
Slice the sweet potato into 1-inch rounds. (Yes, you could roast the whole potato and scoop out a soft-delicious spoonful, but roasting a whole potato takes up to 2 hours and let's face it – Ain't nobody got time for that).
Put the rounds in a bowl and drizzle coconut oil all over them until they are covered on both sides.
Sprinkle them with cinnamon, cayenne, salt and pepper.
Roast them in the oven for 15 minutes.
Turn them over with a spatula and roast the other side for another 15 minutes.
Once done, remove from the oven, mash them up with almond butter, and sprinkle with cinnamon and shredded coconut. Keep mashing until you have a creamy spread. I added a drop of coconut oil to get it nice and smooth. NOTE: If you don't want to make a spread, you can simply use the sweet potato rounds as your "crackers" and spread the almond butter on top. See above.
Eat it straight with a spoon (totally appropriate) or put it on top of Mary’s Gone Crackers (the nutrient-dense, gluten-free crackers that I am addicted to).

Not to toot my own horn, but if you don’t love this deliciousness, you’re crazy (Toot, Toot!).