If you enjoy sweet potatoes, you’ll love this muffin. It’s one of my all-time favorites and it also happens to be one of my dad’s. So in honor of his upcoming birthday, I delivered a batch of these sweet muffins to him, in lieu of cake.

I first ran across this recipe on the blog, Easy Peasy Organic. Since then, I’ve adapted it to fit my tastes and to fit the ingredients that I typically have in my pantry.  It’s packed with healthy stuff like fresh raw sweet potatoes, whole wheat flour, olive oil and nuts. Best of all, it’s easy to make and you won’t feel guilty about enjoying them.

I love the fact that this recipe uses raw sweet potatoes. All you have to do is peel and grate. I usually buy the red garnet variety, but  any type would work well. As always, organic is your best bet. You’ll want to break out your hand-held grater for this one!

fresh grated sweet potato

Ingredients:

2 eggs, preferably organic
1/2 cup olive oil
1 TSP vanilla
3/4 cup light brown sugar
3 cups grated (raw) sweet potato
1 cup pecans
2 TSP baking powder
1 TSP cinnamon
1/2 TSP salt
1 3/4 cups whole wheat flower

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 360 degrees and line a 12-cup and a 6-cup muffin tin with paper liners.

In a large bowl, mix together the eggs, oil and vanilla. Add the grated sweet potato and pecans to the bowl and mix well.

In a separate bowl, combine your dry ingredients — the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix thoroughly. You may need to use your hands for this. The batter is thick, almost more like a cookie dough. Spoon into muffin tins (3/4 of the way full) and bake for approximately 20 minutes. They’re done when a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean.