sweet potato & vanilla bean cupcakes

The wonders of creating new baked goods with sweet potatoes always excite me. I am a sweet potato-holic, can't get enough of them. I found this recipe over here, and decided it was perfect, nothing else was needed (although I did change the frosting a bit) and I wanted to create it in mini cupcake form. I love mini cupcakes, so easy to eat so many in a sitting! I just wish I could decorate them better to make them cuter. But I am absolutely horrible at decorating them (as you'll notice in the photo). Plus I really should get one of those turning cake stands--they do help, yes? Do you know that I have on my list to take cake decorating classes? Anyone else out there doing this or have done this? I can't wait. Now I have to hope for a class close to cape cod to appear! I really don't want to have to drive into Boston for this. For those of you that do decorate and are fairly good at it, what did you buy for decorating tools and where? I would love to know, since if I can't find classes, then maybe I can buy them and just practice, practice, practice.



My changes: for the cake no nutmeg, and I used mini cupcake pans. Made about 12 mini's, not much batter. For the frosting I did 1/2 - 3/4 cup of confectioners sugar, 2TB fresh OJ, half stick of room temp butter (unsalted), tiny pinch of salt, whipped up very well and then chilled for a bit before frosting.

sweet potato cupcakes
adapted from blog.serialcooking.com
print recipe

Cook notes: this does not make much batter. I was only able to get 12 mini muffins from this. You can try using a loaf pan, but use a small one.

Cake:
225g mashed cooked sweet potatoes (1 small sweet potato)
150g plain flour
110g butter
100g dark brown sugar
50ml yogurt
1 egg
1 vanilla pod (alternatively you can use vanilla extract but the taste won’t be quite the same)
½ tsp ground nutmeg (I did NOT use this)
1tsp baking powder
1 pinch of salt

For the icing:
½ - ¾ cup confectioners sugar
2 TB freshly made orange juice
Half stick of unsalted butter (4 ounces), room temp
Pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350 degrees). Spray a mini cupcake pan with non stick spray.
Cream the softened butter with the vanilla seeds scraped out of the pod, sugar, ground nutmeg and salt.
Add in the egg, slightly beaten.
Mix well until well blended.
Add the mashed sweet potatoes and yogurt.
Combine the baking powder and flour and add to the mixture. Mix well.
Pour the mixture into the pan.
Bake for 30 to 35 minutes.
Leave to cool.
To make the icing, mix the icing sugar, butter whip then add in the orange juice. Chill a bit before frosting.
When the cake is cool, spread the icing on top.