Japanese Sweet Potato Cookies
Gluten free, coconut sugar sweetened, soft, chewy, crunchy and EASY!
Happy New Year wenches! I don’t know about you but I needed the reset of a new year, after the stodgy and stuck energy of the last one. Once Christmas Day had passed I was ready to embrace the New Year mindset. We took down the tree and cleaned, organized and wrote down some intentions to escort us into 2024. This year is the year of getting what I want, a great manifesting opportunity to attract the life that I deserve and desire. I can feel it all bubbling inside of me…
We began December with vision boards created in the company of some dear friends and a mound of sourdough cinnamon rolls. One simply cannot manifest on an empty stomach. I ended the month of December in a Burning Bowl ceremony with friends where we made ashes of that which does not serve us anymore, and blessed and invited that which we will be attracting this year, all under the eyes of the NYE moon.
I’m had a few witches join me for dinner tonight while our friend Kelli honored us with a bone reading. It’s similar to Tarot and can help clarify and direct you moving forward, or assist you in navigating through the sticky stuff. In exchange for the divination I provided the feast: homemade wild boar sausage, miso-honey-butter sweet potatoes and herby chimichurri, and we couldn’t feast without the promise of dessert. After a failed rice pudding attempt, I settled on cookies to be nibbled alongside an after supper pot of tea.
With a bag of Japanese sweet potatoes on my counter and a fridge full of Kerry Gold (a very thoughtful Christmas gift), I followed my cookie-cooking instincts, and I NAILED IT! I can’t even believe it, I guess the hundreds of hours of GBBO have finally payed off. These are the real deal, bakery-style, 100% regular, not-hippie tasting cookies, minus half the sugar and all of the flour.
So here goes… let me know how these were for you!
Makes 9
You will need:
1 tightly packed cup of cooked Japanese sweet potato flesh (I baked them whole with skins on then squeezed them out of their peels.)
1/2 stick of high quality salted butter
3/4 cups of coconut sugar
1 egg yolk
1/2 cup of organic white rice flour
1 tsp vanilla paste
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup of chopped dark chocolate
Flaked salt
Method:
Add the cooked sweet potato to a frying pan or skillet. Spread it across the bottom of the pan and turn heat to medium-high. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring often to prevent burning. This is to evaporate some of the excess moisture in the potato and is an important step. Don’t skip!
In a large bowl add the cubed 1/2 stick of butter and the coconut sugar. Add the warm sweet potato and using an electric whisk combine well until smooth and creamy. Add the egg yolk and rice flour, mix until smooth. Add the vanilla, a small pinch of salt and the baking soda. Mix once more until all combined.
Chop the dark chocolate into chunky pieces and fold in 2/3 of it into the mixture. Set aside the reaming 1/3 of chocolate Refrigerate dough for an hour or two to firm up.
Preheat oven to 350F.
Prepare a baking sheet with parchment or grease it generously. Take 2 tbsp of dough and quickly form it into a rough ball with your hands. Plop onto the baking sheet, and continue until the dough is used up. Space about 2 inches apart. Press the remaining chocolate pieces into the tops of each cookie and sprinkle with flaked salt.
Bake for 15-20 minutes, check every 10 minutes or so as oven temperatures do vary (ahem! boat oven) The cookies will have deep golden bottoms and edges and will still feel fairly soft in the middle when touched when they are cooked. Bake longer for a crisper cookie. Allow to cool thoroughly and they will firm up and also flatten a little if they puffed up a little in the oven.
Keep in an airtight container as they will soften a little over time.
