Sweet Potato Cinnamon Muffins

As you all know already, I love sweet potatoes and if I could I would add them to any dish! So imagine how I excited I was when I tried this amazing recipe.

I haven’t been able to find the orange-coloured sweet potatoes in Nairobi yet. Have you? I’d love to know where I can source them from if you have. For now i’ve been using the white sweet potatoes which are alright but I find the orange ones sweeter. All the ingredients are readily available at Healthy U, local supermarkets and fruit and vegetable markets. I’d love to know if you try out these muffins. I adapted the recipe from the Vegan 8 and the muffins turned out so delicious! The muffins are moist and sweet and the caramel sauce is amazing! I’m already imagining all the dishes I could top this caramel sauce on. They’re really nice to have as a snack or even for tea. I also love that it contains very few ingredients and is so simple to make. Enjoy!

[ingredients title=”Ingredients”]

• 140g almond flour
• 118g oat flour or 80g potato starch
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 96g coconut sugar
• ½ tsp sea salt
• ½ cup cooked mashed sweet potato
• 1½ tbsp vanilla essence
• 1½ tbsp cinnamon
• 2 tsp baking powder (a gluten free option is available at Healthy U)
• 1 cup coconut milk

[/ingredients]

Sweet Potato Caramel

[ingredients title=”Ingredients”]

• ¼ cup cooked mashed sweet potato
• ½ cup coconut milk (118 ml, or use cashew milk or soy milk, use a little less for extra thick caramel)
• ¼ tsp cinnamon
• 4 tbsp coconut sugar (do not sub with another sugar)
• ¼ tsp fine sea salt
• ¼ tsp vanilla

[/ingredients] [directions title=”Directions”]

1. Cook your sweet potato by placing a large sweet potato (with skin on) on foil and bake for 50-60 minutes at 405 degrees. Let it cool before preparing the muffins.
2. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and line a muffin pan with foil liners. Add the almond flour (or sunflower), oat flour or potato starch, baking powder, sea salt, coconut sugar and cinnamon to a large bowl and whisk very well, breaking up any lumps from the starch.
3. In a small bowl, peel the sweet potato and mash it very well, so no lumps remain. Measure out ½ cup and add it to a small bowl with the vanilla and coconut milk and stir really well.
4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir with a spoon until well mixed. The batter should be similar to the consistency of cake batter.
5. Divide the batter between 8-12 muffin liners, depending on how tall you want them to be. Bake for 22 minutes (20 minutes if you are baking with the oat flour). You can check that they are ready when a toothpick comes out with a few crumbs still on it (but not wet batter) and it lightly springs back when touched. When the muffins come out, they will still be slightly undercooked, but will finish cooking over the next 20 minutes. So, do NOT eat them until they have cooled at least 20 minutes. They will then be incredibly soft, light and moist. Drizzle caramel sauce on top following directions below. The muffins are best eaten within 24 hours, as the starch will cause them to start to dry out after a couple of days.They can be stored in the fridge to keep then fresh.

[/directions]

Directions for caramel [directions title=”Directions”]

1. Add all of the sweet potato caramel ingredients (except the vanilla) to a food processor and blend until completely smooth while scraping the sides a couple of times. Taste and add any more sweetener, if desired.
2. Add to a small pot over a stove and turn to medium-low heat. Once it starts boiling, stir with a rubber spoon for a full couple of minutes or so until it thickens up. This should only take a few minutes. Immediately remove from heat and stir in the vanilla (the caramel will thicken up much more as it cools). It will thicken up more in the fridge as well. Pour into a container and drizzle muffins when they are ready. [/directions]