Sweet Potato Muffins

I get to go shopping today for the whole day with no kids and my best friend Julie! I am so excited about this. It doesn't get much better than that does it? Except maybe for this bowl of quinoa and Greek yogurt topped with chopped apples, walnuts, a little Sunbutter, and agave that I am eating for breakfast right now!

We HAVE to go shopping so we can get all our supplies for our scrapbooking retreat that is coming up in a couple weeks. We might make a few other stops!

So I thought I would try to get a quick post in this morning for another lunch idea. Again, I found this recipe in Runner's magazine. I did tweak it a little because it called for 3/4 cup of sugar and you know I CAN NOT do that much sugar no matter how far I run! So here is what we had for lunch yesterday........

I fixed a quick side salad of mixed greens and spinach topped with sun-dried tomatoes, cucumbers, roasted red peppers, peperoncinis, feta, and soy nuts and drizzled it with a little Greek dressing.  I ended up being glad I was out of regular tomatoes because this salad was delicious with sun-dried and the soy nut crunch is much cheaper than the pine nut crunch and just as delicious! I cut up an orange for Miles and I to share. Have I said before that oranges are getting really good! Go get some! The sweet potato muffin made the meal complete and was a great lunch addition!

Last night at dinner Miles was commenting on how much he loves what I had made, (couscous cakes) and I said, "Hey you didn't say anything about the muffins at lunch!" He tried to redeem himself by saying, "I loved them. I had two of them!" I didn't even notice he had had two of them.

I think they are a perfect muffin. They are sweet but not too sweet and very moist! They are fairly dense but very chewy and have such a great flavor.

Sliced open with a little Earth Balance = A+

So here is the recipe with the couple changes I made:

Sweet Potato Muffins

2 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

3/4 cup sugar ( I used 1/2 cup Stevia and 1/4 cup Sucanat)

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. ground ginger

1/4 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

(I also added 1 tsp. cinnamon)

1/4 cup melted unsalted butter (I used Earth Balance)

1/4 cup vegetable oil ( I used 1/4 cup applesauce)

1 cup pureed or mashed cooked sweet potato

1 egg, beaten

1/2 cup buttermilk

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Grease 12 muffins cups or use liner. Combine all dry ingredients in one bowl. Whisk all wet ingredients in another bowl. Fold wet mixture into dry mixture gently until just combined. Fill muffin cups 3/4 full. Bake 20-25 minutes. (I only cooked them for 20 minutes and I usually have to do longer so start at 20 minutes)

Wet ingredients minus the sweet potato and dry ingredients.

To cook the sweet potatoes I peeled 2 two of them and diced them up. Then I boiled them until they were tender and used my handy potato masher to mash them up finely. I do have extra sweet potato in the fridge but that was on purpose so I could make more of these muffins this weekend. The recipe only yields 12-14 muffins so if you only want that many then just cook one potato.

Gently fold in the wet ingredients to the dry.

The batter was quite thick. I am not sure if it really was supposed to be but the muffins turned out great so I am going with it!

Cook for 20 minute and enjoy the fruit of your labor!

P.S. The husband ate another muffin for breakfast so despite his lack of swooning over my muffins yesterday I do believe he likes them!

P.S.S. I know my kids would LOVE these muffins but I don't think I am sharing this batch with anyone else. I will give them some of the second batch.