Hooray for the birth of my blog! Cheers to the first of many recipes to come.
These muffins are the result of one of my recent health-kicks. Every few months I’ll decide that I need to get down to business, be healthier, and finally cut out all of the empty carbs and junk food from my life… I’ll vow to follow a vegan diet a few days out of the week, eliminate “white” foods, and hide my cupcake cookbook from myself. But then I come to my senses and realize how much happier I am when I have my treats 
.
Anyway, I stumbled across these little gems and had to try them. You can call them healthy, but they have enough flavor to make you think otherwise. The sweet potato makes these babies denser than your usual muffin, and the quinoa gives it a nutty flavor and a different texture. My favorite part is the almond streusel, which adds the perfect amount of sweetness. I had two of these muffins with a tall glass of iced coffee and it made the perfect spring breakfast.
Sweet Potato and Quinoa Muffins with Almond Streusel
Muffins
1 medium sweet potato (should yield approx. 1 C)
1 T Earth Balance
1 T brown sugar
1 ¼ c whole wheat flour
¾ c light brown sugar, packed
½ t ground cinnamon
½ t ground nutmeg
1 t baking powder
½ t salt
¾ c cooked quinoa
2 eggs
4 T Earth Balance, melted
½ c almond milk
2 t vanilla extract
Almond Streusel
1/3 c chopped or slivered almonds
1/4 c granulated sugar
2 T whole wheat flour
1/4 t ground cinnamon
1/4 t ground nutmeg
2 T Earth Balance, melted
Peel and cube sweet potato. Bring a pot of water to a boil, and add peeled, cut sweet potatos. Boil until soft, or about 10-12 minutes. When finished, drain the cooked sweet potato and mash on a plate with a fork. Add Earth Balance and brown sugar. Set aside, and preheat the oven to 400°.
Prepare the streusel by combining all the ingredients in a bowl and mixing together until crumbly. Set aside.
In a separate medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg, and stir until well combined. In a larger bowl, beat together the sweet potato puree, eggs, vanilla, melted Earth Balance and almond milk until smooth. Gradually add the flour mixture to the potato mixture in small batches, stirring until smooth between batches. Finally, fold in the cooked quinoa until completely combined.
Spoon the batter into a muffin tin that’s either been greased or lined with paper muffin liners. Top each muffin with a small amount of streusel then bake for 25 minutes, or until the streusel is golden and the center of the muffin is no longer moist when tested with a toothpick. Remove from heat and allow to cool for 5-10 minutes before removing from the pan.
Adapted from Poor Girl Eats Well
Pictures by Emily- check out her portfolio!
Like the up-close photo. Makes me want a muffin. Good luck with your blog!
These sound interesting and healthy. I have so many sweet potatoes to use up, I think I have to try them. Thanks for sharing the recipe!
First post and already on Tastespotting, congrats! These look great. Do you think these muffins could easily be translated into the “non healthy” version with butter and milk? I don’t have earth balance, but I do have soy milk – perhaps that could work?
Thank you so much! I’m very excited. I do think butter and milk/soy milk will work just fine, that is what was used in the original recipe (linked at the bottom of the directions).
awesome, I’m trying out your recipe right now
these are smellin’ up my house somethin’ fierce right now, and i can hardly wait to dig into 1! i cut the butter and brown sugar out of the sweet potato and added 1 T flaxseed meal instead. then i cut the sugar in the struesel in half as well. didn’t have nutmeg, so used cinnamon instead. so psyched! thanks for sharing.
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These look great! Can’t wait to try them.
Great recipe, can’t wait to try them out! Just a thought that you might want to specify exactly what Earth Balance is to non-US residents along with actual ingredient considering Earth Balance carries so many products- I know you state ‘melted’ but, even though I’m American, I live outside the US and had to google it. Good luck with your blog
We just made these muffins and they are delicious. I used real butter and they are very moist. If I didn’t know it has sweet potato and quinoa, I never would have guessed they were the ingredients. Great recipe. Thanks for sharing.
I have to say I really adore your site, the way you write is wonderful!
What a compliment! Thank you so much
Trying to make these right now, but I am confused. I see brown sugar twice in ingredients (1 TB somewhere as well as 3/4 cup somewhere else), but in the text of directions it only says brown sugar one time, so I’m not sure how much brown sugar to add where………hope that makes sense. In case these turn out bad (uggh, sigh), and I want to try again, can you correct this brown sugar thing. Thanks.