Sweet Potato Cupcakes

Sweet Potato cupcakes? Yes! Sounds a little odd, but, oddly enough, they were good!! Jen here, with my story on how the little old sweet potato became a yummy treat! Make way for a new type of cupcake. The sweet potato cupcake!

Adding ingredients in their natural form was something I wanted to bring to my cupcakes. In trying to make them a little healthier, as healthy as a cupcake can be, we have an orange.

Squish, squish. Fresh orange juice!

Another of the fresh ingredients is the star of my recipe, the sweet potato. Just microwave two sweet potatoes for approximately 6-8 minutes until you can put a fork in it. Slice them in half then scrape out the inside goodness! You will need 16 ounces of sweet potato. It ended up being the perfect amount with one large and one medium sweet potato.

I didn't know what to mash the sweet potato with. Kelly's George Foreman cleaner thingy worked out great. Take a look around your kitchen for alternatives and it lets your items have more than one use. :)

In your bowl of hopefully mushed sweet potatoes add the fresh orange juice and vanilla extract.

Sugar is always used in baking. I wanted to go natural. So I chose to use Florida Organic sugar cane.

Here is a picture of the yummy batter ready to be poured.

Take your pecans, hopefully contained, and smash away! Keep hitting them until they are the size you desire.

Toast the pecans on the stove until you can smell them. Be sure to check on them so you don't end up burning them like I almost did. Shhhh. Our little secret. ;)

Put the pecans on the bottom of the cupcake holders. If you're a big pecan lover, you can even put them in the batter.

Had some fun at Home Goods and found this nifty batter squeezer thing. It was very controlled. I highly recommend grabbing one.

I wanted to test out this other cool gadget, cupcake/pie maker, so I used the rest of the sweet potato cupcake batter and filled about 3/4 of the way. This was fantastic. It allowed me to make lots of smaller sized sweet potato cupcakes in case you wanted a smaller version.

After baking the cupcakes, take them out two minutes before they are done cooking and set your oven to broil. I found these gigantic marshmallows and cut the bad boys in half. Take one half facing down and plop it onto all of the cupcakes. Put in the oven and watch them closely! This is your topping for these cupcakes. After they are done being toasted, take them out of the oven and press them down so they cover the whole cupcake.

As for the little ones, as soon as they were done, I put them on a cooling rack. I took those gigantic marshmallows and cut the halves into another half and put them on top while they were still warm. It allows the bottom of the marshmallow to glue itself to the mini version.

Top your cupcake with or without a pecan and call it a day!

And that's the story how a sweet potato became a cupcake!~ Sweet Potato Cupcakes ~

This is Jen saying thanks for reading! Signing out!!

~*~

Ingredients

1 cup coarsely chopped pecans

2 cups of sugar (organic or not) ;)

1 cup butter, softened

4 large eggs

16 oz mashed sweet potatoes

2/3 cup orange juice (freshly squeezed)

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1/4 tsp salt

Garnish : Pecans

Preparation

1. Toast pecans stove top or place them on a baking pan for 350* for 8 to 10 min or until toasted.

2. Beat sugar and butter at medium speed with an electric mixer until blended. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating until blended after each addition.

3. Whisk together mashed sweet potatoes, orange juice, and vanilla extract. Combine flour and next 5 ingredients. Add flour mixture to sugar mixture alternately with sweet potato mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Beat at low speed just until blended after each addition. Fold in toasted pecans or leave out and put in baking cups. Place baking cups in muffin pan, filling two-thirds full.

4. Bake at 350* for 26-28 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted into center comes out clean. Place marshmallow halves on top and put in broiler. Watch them closely.

5. Share and enjoy!