I’m a fanatic of sweet potatoes. I could eat them every day. Nothing fancy either, I prefer them plain. Just a fork please! In fact, it irritates me when people over sweeten them. Once a year (for Thanksgiving) I make “candied yams” with an insane amount of butter, dark corn syrup, and brown sugar. BUT other than that, don’t you come near my sweet potato with your marshmallows!!

I digress … I was having a hard time thinking of a topic for this post. K.Busy and I were at dinner, and she suggested I bake something. She knows I love to bake. The scientist in me loves the recipe (aka protocol), the measuring of ingredients, and putting it all together. I love to try wacky stuff too. So we were scrolling through my Pinterest when a “healthy” cookie recipe caught my eye. Sweet Potato cookies! Yes, please! A perfect compromise for a something sweet, and not completely falling off the “I’m going to eat better” wagon (that’s a different post).

Here is the link to the recipe I used: http://www.laurenkilisky.com/2012/12/sweet-potato-chocolate-chip-cookies.html

I ended up having to make one substitution because I couldn’t find oat flour at my grocery store. And I made one oops because I didn’t buy enough nut butter. I didn’t know what nut butter was, so I just ended up buying a small package of almond butter. Seems legit, right? Silly me forgot to notice I needed 1/2 a cup of the stuff, not a tablespoon or two. I also couldn’t find the Yemen spice mix. I thought I had it all at the house, but I didn’t have clove. Oh well, going to try it anyway!
The directions above say to cube and boil the sweet potatoes, then put them in a food processor. I thought I had a better plan, and thankfully it all turned out! I peeled and cubed the sweet potato, and put it in a steamer container. Set it to HIGH for 5 minutes. It was “easily forkable” after that time. So I dumped it all in the kitchenaid bowl, added the whisk attachment, and let it go. Faster and less clean up.

Then I assembled the wet and dry ingredients (minus clove and a lot of nut butter). I also switched the kitchenaid mixer from the whisk to a slotted spatula.

The batter didn’t taste particularly good. It was just kind of spicy sweet potato. But we’ve already come this far!
I used a 1 inch cookie dough scoop, and  placed them on a non-stick baking sheet. If you’ve never tried these things you REALLY need to. I spaced them fairly far apart because I wasn’t sure if they would spread out at all. The recipe said to tap them down, but the dough felt gooey, and like it should spread out?
Well … they didn’t. My first batch came out more like muffin tops. They didn’t move at all.

The second batch was much more successful. While they both tasted the same, the second looked more like cookies. They are super light and fluffy. More of a cake-like texture than a classic chocolate chip cookie. They were lightly spiced, really moist (even without the right amount of nut butter), and right out of the oven the chocolate chips were warm and melty. Delicious! And you don’t have to feel guilty about having more than 1 … or 5.

My husband came home from the gym and was amazed at how good they tasted with how relatively “not bad” they are for you. I’ll absolutely be making these again!

~K. Bendy

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