Sweet Potato Brownies

I love finding new healthy recipes and then tweaking them to suit my own body’s likes and dislikes. I think it’s really important to remember that just because something contains healthy wholesome ingredients, doesn’t mean that it’s right for your body. It took me quite a while to work this out regarding my own diet. So often I would see a healthy recipe and I’d hit the kitchen filled with excitement and enthusiasm, only to be disappointed by my body’s reaction to the finished product. I often felt bloated, gassy, crampy or sluggish after tucking into my new creation. And that would lead to total frustration because I was trying so hard to eat healthy, but yet it just wasn’t working out the way it was supposed to.

Now a days it’s a different story. I’ve worked out which foods help my body thrive and feel alive, and which foods drain me of my precious energy and make me feel like poo! Take the sweet potato brownie recipe below, I found this on Rosanna Davison’s website, I was super excited to try them out but first I needed to get tweaking. My body doesn’t like buckwheat, it gives me heartburn, so I used brown rice flour instead as it suits my digestive system better. I also changed the walnuts for hazelnuts, but only because I think chocolate and hazelnuts are an amazing combination. I used honey instead of maple syrup, I had honey in the cupboard and I wasn’t going to let it go to waste. The last thing I swapped was regular dates for the medjool dates. I was at the health food store getting my ingredients and the medjool dates were twice the price as regular organic dates. I thought feck that shur the regular dates will do the job, so I used 25 regular dates instead of 15 medjool dates, and it worked out perfectly.

I think it’s super important to work with your body’s likes and dislike, and equally important to work with your budget. Often people will shy away from healthy eating because they think it’s too expensive, but it’s definitely something that you can work around! They sell cacao in Aldi now for goodness sake, so there really is no excuse!

Ingredients

  • 15 Medjool dates, pitted
  • Coconut oil, for greasing
  • 600g sweet potatoes (about 2 medium potatoes), peeled and cut in half
  • 85g raw organic cacao powder
  • 80g ground almonds
  • 50g chopped walnuts (optional)
  • 270ml unsweetened almond milk
  • 2 tbsp good-quality maple syrup
  • 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
  • Pinch of Himalayan pink salt or sea salt
  • 100g buckwheat flour
  • 1 tsp gluten-free baking powder

Method

  1. Soak the dates in a small bowl of warm water for 15–20 minutes to soften. Drain well.
  2. Preheat the oven to 210°C. Lightly grease a 24cm x 24cm square baking tin with coconut oil.
  3. Steam the halved sweet potatoes for about 10 minutes, until soft.
  4. Place the steamed sweet potatoes into a blender with the soaked dates, cacao powder, ground almonds, walnuts (if using), almond milk, maple syrup, vanilla extract and a pinch of salt. Blend together until smooth and pour into a bowl.
  5. Fold in the flour and baking powder until the batter reaches a thick consistency and pour into the greased baking tin.
  6. Bake for 20–25 minutes, until the top is crisp and a knife inserted into the centre of the brownies comes out clean and dry.
  7. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for a few minutes before slicing the brownies into squares and transferring to a wire cooling rack.
  8. Store the brownies in an airtight container in the fridge for up to four days.

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