Sweet Potato Casserole Cookies

There has been a long standing tradition in my family that one of my aunts will bring sweet potato casserole.  They have flip flopped a few times on who brings it, but I never mind who makes it as long as it is there.  I love it.  It is my very favorite Thanksgiving dish.  My VERY favorite.

So imagine my suprise this year when NO ONE MAKES IT.  What the heck is going on these days?!?! My most beloved dish was MISSING from Thanksgiving.  The horror...

No matter, I have taken life into my own hands.  I was pondering today, in class mind you so pondering while staring at a PowerPoint, what I was going to do with some sweet potatoes I had bought.  I milled and I mulled, I wondered and pondered, and finally I decided that I would make sweet potato cookies with a maple glazed pecan topping.  And then I realized, hey, that sounds like sweet potato casserole...

 Ingredients:
-1 very large, thick sweet potato, finely shredded, mine was pretty close to the size of a 20oz soft drink bottle
-2 C oats
-1 egg (I used 4 TB of liquid egg whites because I did not want to mess up breakfast, but under normal circumstances I would use 1 jumbo egg)
-1/2 stick butter, room temperature
-1/2 C brown sugar, packed
-1/2 C AP flour
-1/4 C granulated sugar
-1/2 tsp baking powder
-1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
-1/4 tsp ginger
-2 shakes of nutmeg
-Dash of vanilla extract
-Pinch of salt

Topping:
-1 C chopped pecans
-1/4 C Real Dark Amber Maple Syrup
-1 TB brown sugar

I know right? That is quite the list of ingredients.  What makes this different than other sweet potato cookie recipes is that you do not have to cook the sweet potato first.  YES! Exactly as I prefer it.  I make granola bars, muffins, and similar with carrots a lot, which are usually at least as obnoxious if not moreso than sweet potatoes when it comes to getting done.  I figured that since a finely shredded carrot worked in a granola bar, I had a great shot for these which would cook a little longer.

So I peeled the sweet potato and shredded it on the back, smaller grate side of my Kitchenaid box grater.  It is a champ when it comes to pretty much everything, and is one of my favorite kitchen tools.

In fact, Kitchenaid pretty much makes all my favorite kitchen tools...

Anyway, I shredded the sweet potato right into my mixing bowl, added all the remaining cookie ingredients and gave it a good mix.  If you are a little worried that your sweet potato wasn't big enough, add in 1.5 C of oats to begin with and go up after you see the texture of the batter with the rest of ingredients. You can add the rest in if it seems to moist.  It formed a moist batter that held its shape pretty well when I scraped the sides down, as you can see in the first picture.  I plopped spoonfuls of it down onto a parchment lined baking sheet and made little wells in them for the topping.  I would suggest making deeper wells, mine were very shallow.  It resulted in a lot of running over of maple syrup.  But I had planned for things to not go 100% perfectly since this was highly experimental, hence the parchment paper.

Mix the topping ingredients together and spoon about a half tablespoon or so into each cookie well. Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes until the edges are firm and desired doneness is reached.  My pans are dark, so you might end up closer to the 30 minute mark with a light pan.  I baked mine exactly 25 minutes.  Let them sit on the pan for a couple minutes when they come out and then transfer to cooling racks. 

The edges of mine are firm and the centers ended up soft right under the pecan topping.  They are super yummy and really do remind me of sweet potato casserole.  This recipe made 18 for me...some of which were definitely a little bigger than others.  I maybe should invest in a cookie scoop.

My idea originally started as a healthy granola bar, but as you might imagine I am in no mood for healthy things right now.  If you think about it though, a sweet potato cookie is probably a lot better option than a chocolate chip one, so I will use that as my defense.

This was very much a wing it recipe for me, with a little reference to the recipe on the quaker oats lid for what even goes in an oatmeal cookie in the first place.  These are my favorite kind of bakesperiments, know the basic idea and general concept, and then just roll with it. 

And a little secret for whoever bakes these, if the maple syrup glaze does happen to run off, it makes the most fantastically delicious sugar shard that you can eat and not share if you so choose!

Happy crafting!