sweet potato apple muffins with cherry crumb topping - BSI!!!

November 15, 2008Andrea

So this morning I finally had a chance to try out the BSI recipe I've been working on for the last couple of days!!! This is my first BSI submission, and the one goal I set for myself was to try something that I had never tried before, not necessarily something that nobody else has ever tried before. A big thank you to Melissa for picking Sweet Potatoes as this week's BSI! It was fun to challenge myself to come up with my own recipe and really think about what sweet potatoes mean to me.

I've been in a mega-baking mood lately, so I decided to run with that and come up with a yummy sweet potato baked good. At first I was thinking cookies, then I got really into breads so I decided to do muffins instead. I love that baked goods become so seasonal - I make strawberry rhubarb pie in the spring, fresh berry and peach cobblers in the summer, pumpkin bread and apple crisp in the fall. I really wanted the muffins to scream "this is fall!!!" and become something that I crave when the weather gets cooler.

I started with my banana apple bread recipe and substituted sweet potato for the banana, thinking that they would have similar consistencies and the apples and spices in the bread would compliment the sweet potato well. I wanted to make some sort of crumb topping, and cranberries immediately jumped to mind, but I only had dried cherries in the pantry so I made do with those. Here's the recipe, I hope you enjoy it! There are a few modifications at the bottom that I think will make the muffins even better next time.

Sweet Potato Apple Muffins with Cherry Crumb Topping

Yields 12 muffins

146 calories, 3.7g fat, .8g sat fat, 26.3g carbs, 13.1g sugar, 3.2g protein per muffin

Muffin Ingredients:

1 medium baked sweet potato, mashed (about 1-1/2 cups)

1/2 cup light brown sugar

1 egg

1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp apple sauce

1 tbsp orange zest

1 cup peeled, chopped tart apple (pink lady, granny smith, etc.)

1-1/4 cup white whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp sea salt

1-1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

Crumb Topping Ingredients:

2/3 cup walnut halves

1/3 cup dried cherries

1/4 cup WWWF

1-1/2 tbsp cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1 tbsp brown sugar

Steps:

Preheat oven to 350*. In a small bowl, mash the potato and add the brown sugar, applesauce, orange zest and egg. Mix well.

Add the chopped apple to the wet mixture.

In a larger bowl, sift the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and gently fold together.

Place walnuts, cherries, flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg in a blender and briefly blend to chop coarsely.

Put topping mixture into small bowl and add butter pieces. Blend with fingers until mixture resembles coarse bread crumbs.

Pour batter into greased standard-size muffin pan, sprinkle with topping and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Let cool for 5 minutes in the muffin pan then release and cool on rack for 10 more minutes before serving.

wet ingredients

dry added to wet

topping mixture

pre-baking

I'm pretty happy with the result! The muffins are perfectly moist, and the sweet potato and apple flavors work beautifully together. I love the tartness that the dried cherries add, and will probably increase the orange zest next time because it didn't really come through. I am a bit disappointed in the topping, it could be a tad more sweet and a lot more crunchy. In hindsight I realize that I should have toasted the walnut halves prior to coarse chopping them in the blender. And I think that pecans may have been a better nut choice, but I didn't have any in the pantry.