Sweet Potato & Cacao Cookies || Healthy Sweet Treats

I do love a healthy sweet treat! Here is a recipe for not your typical cookie as it made with sweet potatoes!

Sweet potato might not seem like the first thing you'd want to find in a cookie, but their natural sweetness and high fibre and starch content means it can replace the sugar and part flour substitute! Of course this makes it heathier than your average cookie as there is no refined sugar or flour, but sweet potatoes are also high in beta-carotene and vitamin A, as well as the raw cacao powder is full of anti-oxidants, protein and magnesium meaning these cookies are actually good for you!

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Ingredients:
1 fairly large sweet potato
1 cup oats
3 tbsp cacao powder
1 tsp cinnamon
6 squares dark chocolate (that's all I had in otherwise
add more if you want!)
2 eggs
4 tbsp peanut butter (almond/cashew etc butter
would work too)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Method:
-Peel and chop the sweet potato into small squares and boil until soft. Drain and mash then set aside.
-In a food processor or blender, blitz the oats so they are a bit smoother (doesn't have to be as smooth as flour though), place into a bowl and add to it the chocolate chopped into chunks or add chocolate chips if easier, cacao powder, cinnamon and mix together.
-In a separate bowl or just use the blender again as it's easier, blend together peanut butter, eggs and vanilla until smooth. Add this egg mix to the mashed sweet potato and stir until smooth. Then carefully fold this mix into your oat mix until combined and chill the dough in the fridge for around 15 minutes.
-In the meantime preheat the oven to 180 C and grease and line a baking tray. Once chilled, drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto the tray however big you'd like your cookies and press each one down with a fork. I made around 9 medium sized cookies.
-Bake for 20-25 minutes, place onto a cooling rack to cool straightaway so they don't keep cooking and dry out on the baking tray. Serve and enjoy!

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They are quite a squidgy cookie, more like a brownie or a flapjack but I personally quite like cookies this way! As you can probably guess I winged this recipe from what I had in my cupboard so you can play around with measurements and consistencies if you think the mixture needs it. If you liked this recipe there some similar ones in previous blog posts such as these chickpea peanut butter blondies,  energy balls and heathy pancakes to enjoy a treat with a bit less guilt as you're getting some vitamins and nutrients in too.