Purple Sweet Potato Spiced Brownies with Maple Kefir Frosting
Free baking is something I’ve been playing around with lately, and I highly recommend it as you get to just eyeball the ingredients and go with your gut while throwing it all together. Especially when it comes to these purple sweet potato spiced brownies, you really can’t go wrong as long as you keep to a generally consistent ratio of wet to dry ingredients.
These purple sweet potato spiced brownies were born out of that experimentation. It’s like pumpkin spice, but with locally grown organic purple sweet potato in fudgey, brownie goodness. Once you get the basic recipe down, it’s a free for all. Throw in any adaptogen, tonic herb, natural sweetener, egg replacements, or whatever you like at the moment.
Purple sweet potatoes are a good source of beta-carotene and a richer source of anthocyanin pigments which act as antioxidants that can help reduce inflammation and DNA damage, and boost your immune system. Purple sweet potatoes have about three times more anthocyanins than the average blueberry. They’re also rich in minerals and richer in potassium than bananas, boasting better blood sugar!
Purple sweet potatoes were also a vital factor in the traditional lifeways of the Okinawans (blue zone), helping them to live long, meaningful, joyous lives well into their 100s, though this trend went on a downward trajectory with the eventual introduction of Western, industrialised, nutrient-void foods. They’re an excellent source of vitamin C, carotenoid compounds, selenium, tyrosine, and various polyphenolic compounds sure to protect you in today’s highly inflammatory modern environment.
Ingredients you’ll need for the purple sweet potato spiced brownies:
Purple sweet potato
Avocado
Activated raw walnuts
Shredded coconut
Cacao butter (melted)
Cacao powder
Natural pumpkin spice mix (or make your own with Ceylon cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, ground ginger, and ground cloves)
Vanilla bean
Sea salt
Superfeast Mason’s Mushrooms (use code ROOTTOSKY10 for 10% off)
Pasture raised egg
Virgin cold-pressed coconut oil
Aluminum-free bicarb soda
Grass fed collagen peptides (optional but recommended for the amino acid profile)
Ingredients you’ll need for the creamy maple kefir frosting:
Cashews, raw and activated
Goat kefir (or coconut kefir)
Virgin cold-pressed coconut oil
Pure maple syrup
Lemon juice (just a squeeze)
Vanilla bean
Sea salt
Filtered water, for blending
How to make these purple sweet potato spiced brownies with maple kefir frosting
First, roughly chop up and thoroughly roast the sweet potatoes until they’re oozing. Let them cool.
Blend the dry ingredients in a food processor until you get a fine crumble.
Add in the wet ingredients including the sweet potatoes, scrape it out into a parchment paper lined brownie tin, and bake!
Tips for making these:
- Refrigerating or freezing the purple sweet potato spiced brownies overnight ensures the BEST taste/texture, though they’re perfectly fine fre$h out the oven.
- If you have a pre-made natural pumpkin spice mix like I do, you could just use 1 heaping tablespoon of it instead of all the separate spices. Baking is alchemy, measure according to heart.
- I used magical blue lotus by Wild Bloom Botanicals to garnish the brownies, but you could use anything like dried flower petals, hemp seeds, ground flax seeds, extra pumpkin spice sprinkle, shredded coconut, raw cacao nibs, goji berries, etc.
- If you frosted the brownies, keep them chilled if not serving immediately!
- If you don’t do cacao, use carob powder!
You might also like these recipes:
Cosmic gingerbread sweet potato brownies
Pumpkin spiced chocolate dipped buckwheat cookies
Special thanks to SuperFeast, truly one of the best affiliates I’ve been fortunate enough to connect with. All thoughts are my own. Use code ROOTTOSKY10 for 10% off at the SuperFeast website.
If you tried these purple sweet potato spiced brownies with maple kefir frosting or any other recipe on this blog, let me know how you liked it by leaving a comment below. Be sure to follow along for more inspiration at Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook.
Purple sweet potato spiced brownies with maple kefir frosting
Equipment
- Unbleached, biodegradable If You Care parchment paper
- 8×8-10×10 inch brownie pan
- food processor
Ingredients
Dry ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups chopped biodynamic purple sweet potato about 1 medium purple sweet potato
- 1 cup activated organic walnuts soaked in filtered water overnight, then drained
- 1/3 cup organic shredded unsweetened coconut
- 2/3 cup raw organic cacao powder
- 1 tsp SuperFeast Mason's Mushrooms blend
- 2 tsp ground organic ginger
- 1 tsp organic Ceylon cinnamon
- 1 tsp ground organic nutmeg
- 1 tsp ground organic allspice
- 1/2 tsp ground organic cloves
- 1 tsp aluminum-free bicarb soda
- 1 tsp Peruvian mountain salt
- 1 tbsp grass-fed collagen peptides optional
Wet ingredients
- 1/4 cup organic virgin cold pressed coconut oil, melted
- 1 organic ripe avocado you could use 1/4 cup cacao butter instead
- 1 pasture raised egg or flax egg, or chia egg
- 1 tsp organic vanilla bean
- 1/3 cup pure organic maple syrup
Creamy maple kefir frosting
- 3/4 cup raw activated organic cashews soaked overnight or at least 2-3 hours, and rinsed
- 1/4 cup grass fed raw goat kefir or coconut kefir
- 2 tbsp organic virgin cold-pressed coconut oil
- 2 tbsp pure organic maple syrup
- 1 tsp fresh organic lemon juice
- 1/2 tsp organic vanilla bean
- 1/4 tsp Peruvian mountain salt
- 2-4 tbsp filtered water as needed for blending
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400 F. Line the brownie pan with the parchment paper. This pan will be used for both roasting the sweet potato and the final brownies. Right away, chop up your sweet potato into rough disks, about 1 cm thick. Spread them out on the baking sheet and roast the sweet potato pieces until oozing, 30-35 minutes.
- While the sweet potatoes are roasting, prepare the rest of the ingredients. In a food processor, blend the dry ingredients into a fine crumble: walnuts, shredded coconut, cacao, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, bicarb soda, sea salt and collagen. Add the wet ingredients to the dry crumble: coconut oil, avocado, egg, vanilla and maple syrup. Blend it all into a thick brownie batter. Set the food processor aside.
- Once the sweet potato chunks are well roasted, remove and let them cool to room temperature, 10-20 minutes. In the food processor, introduce the sweet potato and blend to combine evenly with the brownie batter. Keep the brownie pan lined with parchment paper intact to bake the brownie batter. The batter will be really thick so you'll have to spread it out in the pan.
- Bake the brownies at 375 F for 40-50 minutes. Remove and let cool; it'll smell absolutely heavenly. Serve warm if you like, but I HIGHLY recommend freezing them for best texture. Once brownies are cooled to room temperature, transfer the baking tray to the freezer to solidify for about 1 hour (up to overnight).
- Make the maple kefir frosting. In the food processor, combine the cashews, kefir, coconut oil, maple syrup, lemon juice, vanilla and sea salt. Splash in some filtered water if you'd like to thin it out. Once the texture is creamy, scrape out the frosting into a small bowl, and place it in the refrigerator to set for at least 1 hour (up to overnight).
- If you froze your brownies, remove the tray from the freezer and lift up the parchment paper to remove the brownies from the tray. Spread the maple kefir frosting on top. Slice the brownies into even pieces to make about 16 bars.
- For best taste and texture, refrigerate brownies overnight. Enjoy!
Notes
- Refrigerating or freezing the brownies overnight ensures the BEST taste/texture, though they’re perfectly fine fre$h out the oven.
- If you have a pre-made natural pumpkin spice mix like I do, you could just use 1 heaping tablespoon of it instead of all the separate spices. Baking is alchemy, measure according to heart.
- I used blue lotus by Wild Bloom Botanicals to garnish the brownies, but you could use anything like dried flower petals, hemp seeds, ground flax seeds, extra pumpkin spice sprinkle, shredded coconut, raw cacao nibs, goji berries, etc.
- If you frosted the brownies, keep them chilled if not serving immediately!
- If you don’t do cacao, use carob powder!
- Use code ROOTTOSKY10 for 10% off at the SuperFeast website.
- You could use a round 8″ cake tin if you prefer, and make more of a brownie cake. This would make approximately 8 brownie cake slices.
