Gluten-Free Sweet Potato Muffins with Raisins

My initial feelings on this recipe were mixed. Sweet potatoes? Yum! Sweet potatoes in muffin form? Enh. I wasn’t so sure about the whole vegetable-based baked goods concept…and then I remembered carrot cake. (How could I forget carrot cake?) Putting carrots in cake was a brilliant idea, therefore making muffins out of sweet potatoes must be equally ingenious. Fantastic logic, eh?

Well, it turns out that making muffins out of sweet potatoes resulted in something that had the taste and texture of a biscuit, but was shaped like a muffin. They were good, but a little dry and a little boring. So I added raisins and a bit of cinnamon and they were YUMMY! (So yummy that there’s no photographic proof of their existence. The photo above is of the original sweet potato muffins.)

(Adapted from Mark Bittman’s recipe in Runner’s World)

2 ½ cups gluten-free all purpose flour

¾ cup organic sugar

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. ground ginger

½ tsp. cinnamon (might add more next time)

¼ tsp. baking soda

¼ cup melted unsalted butter*

¼ cup vegetable oil*

1 large sweet potato (cooked and mashed)

1 egg, beaten

½ cup fat-free buttermilk (or equivalent…we used skim milk with lemon juice, but plain yogurt might work as well)

¾ cup raisins

*Note: I would usually substitute applesauce for at least some of the butter and oil, but we were out of applesauce.

1. Preheat oven to 375° and grease a muffin tin.

2. Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, ginger, cinnamon and baking soda in a large bowl. Mix.

3. Add melted butter, oil, sweet potato, egg and buttermilk to the bowl of a stand mixer. Beat until combined.

4. Continue mixing as you gradually add the dry ingredients to the sweet potato mixture. Mix until just combined.

5. Add raisins and stir until they’re reasonably evenly distributed.

6. Pour batter into muffin cups and bake 20-25 minutes.