First of all, I’m sorry. I’ve been really bad with baking updates the last couple of weeks. While I hope you all enjoyed my Scotland updates (you can see part 1, part 2 and part 3 here), I understand that they aren’t what you likely come to this blog for. I am warning you now that there will likely be one from my Chicago trip next week as well… featuring a lot of Pizza.
Anyway, before I get sidetracked rambling about pizza and my travels I thought it was time to do something a bit different. A week or so ago one of my closest friends put out a Facebook status declaring she wasn’t doing too good and asking someone to send her cake. So I am. She is currently doing a Paleo diet, which is something that I’m not even going to begin to pretend I’m an expert on. So she sent me across a few ideas she’d found while she herself had been doing Paleo cooking research.
I opted for Sweet Potato & Ginger Brownies. A lot of the Paleo recipes I came across asked for ingredients which I likely wouldn’t use again, unless I was to regularly do Paleo things. This meant that I wanted to be careful with what I was baking and not shell out for a heap of fancy ingredients. Being my first attempt at this sort of thing I also wanted to keep it simple. These Sweet Potato Paleo Brownies were just right. With the only slightly awkward (read: Expensive) thing I needed to buy being Coconut Flour. I opted for this recipe here.
Plenty of the Paleo recipes call for sweet potato or avocado, often both. They help replace a lot of the flour, butter and chocolate, the avocado being naturally oily and also creamy. The sweet potato being good to bake and help hold things together. A few other recipes that use these sorts of things can be found here.
Oh yeah and the big news? I’m moving to London at the start of October.
- 1 Large Sweet Potato (approx. 2 cups once mashed)
- 3 Eggs
- 57g Butter
- 60ml Honey
- 3 Tablespoons Coconut Flour
- 3 Tablespoons Cocoa Powder
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ground ginger
- ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
- ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
- ¼ teaspoon baking powder
- pinch of salt
- 75g Dark Chocolate, chopped roughly.
- Peel and dice the sweet potato. Place in a pan of boiling water and boil until tender.
- Mash the potatoes until smooth.
- Preheat the oven to 180 °C(160 °C fan assisted) prepare and line a 9x13 inch brownie tin.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer combine the potato, butter, honey and vanilla.
- Add the dry ingredients and mix well, then stir in the chocolate.
- Pour into the prepared tin and spread into the corners.
- Place in the middle of the preheated oven and bake for 30-35 minutes (a tooth pick inserted into the middle should come out clean).
- Remove from the oven and place on a rack, only removing from the pan once cooled.
