When it comes to sweet potato recipes for kids, these muffins are elbowing their way to the top for two reasons: You don’t have to bake the sweet potatoes ahead of time, and they’re full of protein-rich nuts.
Easy and nutritious? Two of my favorite things.
Throw in a specially shaped pan and how can I resist?
My method for making these sweet potato muffins is a bit different from the original recipe on Easy Peasy Organic. It involves a food processor, and not one more bowl. Here’s how we do it.
shredded sweet potato muffins
My favorite source for ground nuts is Trader Joe’s but you can just blend up your own nuts in the food processor too.
- Yield: 1 dozen regular muffins 1x
Ingredients
Scale
- 1 1/4 cup walnuts or almonds (OR 1 cup pre-ground nuts or almond meal, walnut meal, etc.)
- 1 large sweet potato peeled and cut into large chunks
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Prepare muffin pan with butter or paper liners.
- In the bowl of a food processor, pulse nuts until they’re finely ground. (If you’re using ground nuts, just add them after the sweet potatoes have been processed.)
- Add sweet potato chunks and keep grinding until everything is blended together.
- Add the eggs, which will help the mixture come together.
- Next add olive oil and vanilla and pulse again.
- Throw in the dry ingredients and mix only until blended.
- Fill muffin pan 3/4 full and bake according to size: regular muffins 20-22 minutes, mini muffins 10-12 minutes.
P.S. You don’t need a special pan either. Regular muffin pans work beautifully.
These are awesome and I LOVE this simplified process. I used two (very small) sweet potatoes and a carrot. I think I will sub wheat germ for some of the flour next time…and maybe add cranberries or currants?
Yes, exactly, Lauren! I love subbing wheat germ or even ground flaxseed for some of the flour in tons of recipes. Cranberries, currants or dried cherries (my current obsession) would be delicious. So glad you guys liked them too.
Do you think it would work with honey rather than sugar?
Hi Liz! Yes, probably. It’s a very dense dough as it is. You just might need to cook for longer. If you try it will you please let us know how it goes?
These look yummy! I am new at this so forgive the silly question but do I cook the sweet potato first or put it in raw?
Hi Heather! Not silly because this is unusual. You put the sweet potato in RAW. That’s what I love about the recipe. It’s very simple. No cooking ahead of time. Hope you enjoy!
I don’t have a food processor but I do have a blender! Would that work? 🙂 I’m hoping to buy a food processor soon!
Hi Alie!
The dough isn’t wet enough to work well in a blender BUT you could try to slowly add water, little by little, enough to liquify. You would need to cook the muffins longer in that case and I can’t promise it’ll turn out.
Another idea would be simply grating the raw sweet potatoes and using regular FLOUR in place of the nuts, or ground nuts (available at Trader Joe’s and I’m sure a few health food stores). You could also add nuts by chopping up 1/2 a cup or so and stirring them in.
Can coconut be used instead of olive oil?
Hi Sally! If you mean coconut oil, I think it could work. Plus there would be that nice, subtle taste of coconut which would go well with the other flavors. If you try it, can you let us know how it goes?
Hello,
Just tried out the recipe and the muffins were delicious!! Didnt have a big enough muffin tray so put the rest of the batter in a bread tin. Any suggestions on how to keep the top of the muffins soft? They were a bit too crusty! Sharing some pics
Hi Rachna! If the tops were too crusty, you could loosely cover the top of your muffin pan with foil. That’ll keep it from browning any more. Let us know if that helps!