Sweet caroline oh oh oh!
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that sweet potatos have the word SWEET in them. That is a gigantic hint that we shouldn’t only see them as a savory food staple, but allow them to venture into dessert land by making a batch of sweet potato brownies. Dessert land, the place where happy memories are created! Those memories are even happier when although you indulged, you did so in a healthy way, because the best memories are saved in your soul, not on your hips.
Since North Carolina is home to most of the sweet potatos that you can buy in grocery stores (over 70% in fact), I thought it’s more than fitting to give this recipe a name that honors that. Besides, it gives all of you the wonderful opportunity to be reminded of the amazing song by Neil Diamond. It also lends itself as the perfect title for this delicious recipe.
This recipe is gluten-free and uses ground oats, a.k.a. oat flour instead of wheat flour. Moreover they also contain a great deal of protein. So may the oats be ever in your favor! Plus this recipe is vegan, lactose-free and egg-free, but certainly not taste-free, yippie! If you want to find out how to best make your own oat flour, click through the image gallery bellow. The second image contains a video of how I make my own oat flour at home. Besides sweet potato brownies, you can use the oat flour as a replacement for wheat in most of my recipes.
At a glance
- Servings: 12
- Calories per serving: 196 kcal (216 kcal incl. chocolate chips as a topping)
- Total preparation time: 30 min
- Oven time: 30 min
- Time from start to finish: 1 hr
Ingredients
- 1 lbs (480 grams) sweet potatos
- 7 ounces (200 grams) maple syrup
- 2/3 cup (2.4 oz/65 grams) oat flour (if you don’t have oat flour, simply use oats and stick them in the blender to ground them)
- ½ cup (2.2 oz/65 grams) cocoa powder
- ½ cup (4.2 oz/120 grams) almond butter
- 2 tablespoons of coconut oil
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 pinch of salt
- Optional topping: ½ cup chunky chocolate chips
Preparation of sweet potato brownies
First step on our way to brownie heaven, peel the sweet potatos, cut them into a couple of rough chunks and bake them at 400 degrees Fahrenheit/200 degrees Celsius for 20-25 minutes until tender. Next mash them in a food processor, a blender or by hand.
Afterwards, add the maple syrup, almond butter, vanilla aroma and coconut oil to the sweet potato purée and combine everything. Then mix in the cacao powder, the oat flour, baking powder and salt. Salt helps the chocolatey flavor pop and is thereby actually super essential, even though you don’t need much.
Prepare a baking dish with parchement paper. I generally prefer this way over buttering a dish or using cooking spray, especially when it comes to brownies. You thereby avoid having to poke around the dish to get the baked goods out and it’s just overall considerably less hassle. Even more so with these extra fudgy sweet potato brownies.
Pour the sweet potato brownies dough into the prepared dish. Afterwards drizzle the pecan nuts and chocolate chips on top and bake it in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit/175 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes.
Afterwards let the sweet potato brownies rest for about 10-15 minutes, they I whole-heartedly recommend eating them while they are still warm. Consider also adding a bit of vanilla ice cream to your serving.
Sweet potato brownies preparation steps image gallery
More on how to eat yourself healthy
How to boost your vitality through your diet
Health is wealth. While this truth is certainly no ground-breaking revelation, we usually only appreaciate its essence, when we are not healthy, wether that’s with regard to our physical or our mental state or both. Health is the ultimate luxury good, we can own. Nothing else matters more nor should it. Therefore, eat yourself healthy…