Food for the Fam: Gwyneth Paltrow's Sweet Potato + Five Spice Muffins (Slightly Adapted)

I’m going to kick off this recipe help/swap idea and start the ‘Food for the Fam’ series with a recipe I’ve transparently adapted (nicked) from Gwyneth Paltrow’s wholesome cookbook ‘It’s All Good‘. Yes, I know she’s vile to some, but the book is great and there’s even a few things – banana ice cream, marinated tofu, banana pancakes – that the fussy one will eat (or did at last try). Plus it holds the recipe for totally delicious no-deep-fry fish tacos, which is our grown-up treat dinner most weekends. Everything is gluten- and sugar-free too. Helps.

Some are put off by American cups, but oddly I have come to really like cooking with them. I bought mine cheap from Lakeland, and find they make baking particularly easy. And because there’s no weighing, the kids enjoy cooking with me more when we use them as they find the digital scales really boring to use (and so do I).

These muffins involve baking a large sweet potato for an hour before assembling everything else. I do this any time in the week that it suits me, even if I’m not going to bake the muffins immediately. I usually also bake two (or four small ones) and make a double batch of 24 muffins at a time because the boys probably eat two a day each when we have them ‘in stock’ – as do I – and I have no desire to be endlessly baking. I let the sweet potatoes cool and refrigerate them until I’m ready to scoop out the flesh and use it.

You may not have some of the ingredients kicking about, but the beauty is once you have them all, you only really need to regularly stock up on the almond milk (or buy long life which is cheaper, and then have a few cartons in the store cupboard) and maple syrup (because the muffins require quite a bit – that’s where they get their sweetness).

Gwyneth recommends gluten-free baking flour and then using bicarbonate of soda AND baking powder to give the muffins puff. I’ve done this and they tasted kind of chemically and had an odd texture. I’ve tweaked the levels of the powders, but it’s the same. I’ve decided it’s the bicarb that doesn’t work, so my version of the recipe uses spelt flour instead (still good for most people sensitive to wheat) and then cuts it out. If you want to know the GF version, follow the crossed-through bits in the recipe!

These are in the breakfast section of ‘It’s All Good‘, and are mighty useful to have lying around for breakfast, although we have them any time of day. My two don’t even know they have sweet potato in them and we call them ‘Christmas muffins’ in our house on account of the Chinese five spice giving them that peppery ginger-biscuity taste.

Oh and you can also add nuts to this. Walnuts are the bomb, so are pistachios. You can probably replace some of the flour with ground almonds, but I’ve not tried it.

Let me know what you and yours think of them in the comments!

RECIPE

INGREDIENTS

1 large (or two small) sweet potatoes
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup unsweetened almond milk
3/4 cup good-quality maple syrup, plus 2 extra tablespoons for brushing the muffins
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups gluten-free spelt flour (if using GF and the flour doesn’t include xanthan gum, add 1 teaspoon)
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
1.5 tablespoons Chinese five-spice powder
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt (I use flakes and grind them with my fingers – it’s fine)

HOW-TO

1) Place the sweet potato/es in a pre-heated 200-degree C oven, having washed them and pricked them all over with a fork. Bake until soft, about an hour. Set aside until completely cool.

2) Slit the potato/es open and scoop out the flesh, mashing it in a mixing bowl with a fork. Whisk in the olive oil, almond milk, maple syrup, and vanilla.

3) In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, five-spice, and salt. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet.

4) Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper liners (I delegate this to someone smaller) and evenly divide the muffin batter among the cups.

5) Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Brush the tops with more maple syrup before the final five minutes is up and pop back in. Once done, remove from the oven, leave to cool a while and then place on a wire tray.

Disclosure: This recipe is the intellectual property of Gwyneth Paltrow and Julia Turshen, authors of ‘It’s All Good’. It has been adapted in line with my experience of cooking the recipe. There are a couple of affiliate links in this post, placed after I wrote it. No compensation, financial the otherwise, was offered or exchanged for the writing of this post. I’m sharing it because it’s one of the few healthy things that always goes down well in my house! 

// If you’ve enjoyed this post, why not join our adventures by hitting ‘subscribe’ in the side bar. You’ll get the inside scoop on when new posts go live //