Spiced Sweet Potato Blondies with Cranberries and White Chocolate

December 1st.

Wow.

It feels like Summer was just yesterday… but I’m welcoming Winter with open arms. Fall in New England lasts only for the blink of an eye; though we had a handful of unseasonably warm days over the past month, the temperature has now dipped and it is really starting to feel like the holidays.

I’ve been blasting the Trans-Siberian Orchestra Holiday station on Pandora, the mini pumpkins sitting on our windowsills have been replaced with fragrant fir boughs, we’re about to send out seasons greetings cards, and I’ve jumped right into holiday baking.

I’ve always loved the combination of tart dried cranberries and sweet white chocolate, and there’s no denying that the color combination is seasonally appropriate.

The marriage of those two ingredients deliciously compliments these sweet potato blondies, which I loosely adapted from Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s Vegan Cookies Invade your Cookie Jar.

The changes I made to the original recipe are as follows:

• swapped in pumpkin puree for half of the canola oil
• cut way back on the sugar
• used a combination of white whole wheat flour + whole wheat pastry flour instead of all-purpose
• added in a bit of ground nutmeg
• subbed in white chocolate chips and dried cranberries for the nuts and chocolate chips

These sweet potato blondies are beautifully spiced, perfectly dense & chewy, and just sweet enough to not make your teeth ache.

Oh, and they’re huge! I typically divide an 8 x 8 inch pan of brownies/blondies/bars into 16 servings, but I cut these into 9. It is the holidays, after all… but as you can see from the nutritional information listed below the recipe, this dessert isn’t nearly as decadent as many others out there.

I, for one, am totally hooked on these blondies. I’d be perfectly content to bake a few more batches to see me to the end of the year!

Spiced Sweet Potato Blondies with Cranberries and White Chocolate

Printer-Friendly Recipe

yield: 9 large blondies

loosely adapted from Sweet Potato Blondies as seen on 6 Bittersweets, originally from Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s Vegan Cookies Invade your Cookie Jar

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup sweet potato puree (roast a large sweet potato at 400°F for 45-60 minutes, or until very soft; let cool, peel, and puree flesh; measure out 3/4 cup)
• 1/4 cup canola oil
• 1/4 cup pumpkin puree
• 1/3 cup Turbinado sugar
• 1/3 cup Sucanat or lightly packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup milk (I used organic 1%)
• 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup white whole wheat flour
• 3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/8 tsp ground allspice
• 1/2 cup natural white chocolate chips (such as Sunspire)
• 1/2 cup apple-juice sweetened dried cranberries (available at Whole Foods)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Lightly grease a 8 x 8-inch square baking pan.
3. In a large bowl, stir together sweet potato puree through vanilla extract until well-mixed.
4. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour through spices.
5. Gently stir the dry ingredients into the wet, just until moistened. Batter will be thick.
6. Fold in white chocolate chips and dried cranberries.
7. Spoon the batter into the prepared pan in an even layer.
8. Bake for 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the blondies comes out mostly clean. As with brownies, you want a few moist crumbs to adhere to the toothpick, but not any raw batter.
9. Let the blondies cool for 10 minutes before slicing into bars.

Nutritional Information Per Blondie:

238.2 calories, 8.4 grams fat, 0.5 grams saturated fat, 3.2 grams fiber, 25 grams sugar, 3 grams protein