Sweet potato brownies

So I’ve only recently discovered the blog Deliciously Ella and fell in love straight away with the beautiful photography, delicious looking food and therefore seeing as the brownies looked to be one of the more popular recipes I thought what better way to spend a Sunday than trying out a new recipe!

When it comes to brownies I must admit I can pretty much eat a lot of them. There are always new ones to try from crunchie, marble to snickers (yum that was a good one at BBC Good food festival) and so with my new found love for vegetables in baking and my addiction to sweet potato fries at the moment I was quite excited to see what it would be like to test this brownie recipe out.

The ingredients at first proved a bit tricky for me to find. If I had prepared myself and taken a trip to Planet Organic, I might have been a little bit more successful. However, I wasn’t sensible enough and was left with simply a Sainsbury’s or M & S to choose from and unfortunately neither one had the buckwheat flour which left me opting for rice flour.

Staying positive I went in search for the raw cacao and couldn’t get hold of that either so normal cocoa powder it was! Turns out rice flour in brownies might not be the answer to delicious brownies. I also think following cup measurements probably didn’t agree with me as although I converted them according to a website that helps you convert tricky things like this, perhaps I went a little off the mark. The recipe is simple enough to follow and the brownies baked in the time said, however the taste of them didn’t turn out as I was hoping for. Rather than the, ‘wow these are a million times better than chocolate brownies’ reaction it was a strong case of silent chewing followed by my boyfriend pretty much trying to swallow with a look of pain on his face. In my case the initial brownie didn’t taste as good as I was hoping but funnily enough I didn’t find the aftertaste all too bad and opted for another (part of this might have been due to the fact that I hate to waste food but all the same at least they got eaten).

Therefore moral of the story here is that following a given recipe is a good thing to do however don’t be disheartened if it doesn’t go to plan- recipes are for trying and testing and I will try and bake these again. The idea of a healthy yet delicious brownie sounds right up my street so I won’t give up on this recipe yet- I’ll just buy the right ingredients next time! Happy Baking!

Ingredients (I’ve used Delia’s lovely online converter to convert cups into grams which I hope helps)

Makes 10 brownies

2 medium to large sweet potatoes

2/3 of a cup of ground almonds/ 250g

1/2 a cup of buckwheat flour (brown rice flour will also work) / 75g

14 medjool dates

4 tablespoons of raw cacao

3 tablespoons of pure maple syrup

a pinch of salt

Method (taken from Deliciously Ella’s blog):

1) Pre-heat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4, then peel the sweet potatoes. Cut them into chunks and place into a steamer for about  twenty minutes, until they become really soft.

2) Once they are perfectly soft and beginning to fall apart remove them and add them to a food processor with the pitted dates – this will form one of the sweetest, creamiest, most delicious mixes ever!

3) Put the remaining ingredients into a bowl, before mixing in the sweet potato date combination. Stir well.

4) Place into a lined baking dish and cook for about twenty minutes, until you can pierce the brownie cake with a fork bringing it out dry. Remove the tray and allow it to cool for about ten minutes – this is really important as it needs this time to stick together! Remove the brownies from the tray, leaving it another few minutes before cutting them into squares – then dig in and enjoy!