Sweet Potato Muffins and Mutant Corn

Have I mentioned my obsession with sweet potatoes yet?

I'm obsessed with sweet potatoes.

I see no good reason why roasted sweet potatoes aren't a meal in and of themselves. In fact, they often are a meal for me, especially when I've had late lunch and aren't terribly hungry for dinner but know I should eat something.

Once I baked one too many sweet potatoes, though I forget why, and had to find a use for the remaining sweet potato, and sweet potato muffins were born. If you can have pumpkin muffins, why not sweet potato muffins too? No reason, that's why. I altered the Pumpkin Muffin recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance... then altered it some more... then some more... (people keep requesting I make these, so I do), and now I have a version that I pretty much use every time. One thing to note about these muffins is the sugar thing -- I cut the sugar way back from the original pumpkin muffin recipe. I think they're perfect like this, the boy would prefer them a bit sweeter -- but I'm the baker so guess who wins? You may want to play around with the sugar too if it isn't sweet enough for your taste. They are so moist and fluffy and sweet potatoey I don't think you'll be disappointed.

I think baked sweet potatoes work best for this recipe because the baking concentrates the flavor and sugars in the potato. Boiled would probably be too watery. Microwaved would work if you're going for the quick route to mashable sweet potato.


Sweet Potato Muffins
1 3/4 cup white whole wheat or whole wheat pastry flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp cloves
1 cup well mashed or pureed sweet potato
1/2 cup rice milk
1/4 cup applesauce
1/4 cup canola oil
2 tbsp molasses
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and line your 12 muffin tin with cupcake papers (Why don't they make muffin papers? What's with all the haters? But I digress..)

2. Mix the wet ingredients well together in one bowl. Dry ingredients (including sugar) in another. Add the wet to the dry, and stir until just mixed.

3. Fill the muffin papers (ha!) 2/3 to 3/4 full of batter -- whatever makes it divided evenly into 12 spaces. Bake for 18-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean

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Which brings me to my next order of business...
MUTANT CORN!

I found this little beauty at the supermarket this weekend
It's a CORN ON THE COB WITH TWO PARASITIC TWINS!!! Isn't it fantastic?? (Does that make it parasitic triplets? I'm not sure.) I bought it because I knew no one would love it like I do. I have this thing for mutant fruits and veggies, and produce with faces, that sort of thing (one day I'll have to post my collection of photos of eggplants with noses).


Husked, it turns out that they were TWO ALBINO MUTANT PARASITIC CORNS!!

I steamed the big guy lightly and had him for dinner with my lentils, and I tossed the other two (plus husks from these and other corns I made for the boy for dinner) in the compost pile. I'm sure there are going to be some happy squirrels tonight. They love this sort of thing too.