Spiced Sweet Potato Breakfast Bread

Back in October I did a post on 3 Pumpkin recipes in one go, where I made a spiced pumpkin bread, but since it isn’t really pumpkin season any more, I have changed up the recipe a little.

This bread has now become a stable in our freezer and I have it most mornings for breakfast, filling the house with a christmasy aroma when toasting. You sort of feel like you are eating cake for breakfast, even though this is nothing but healthy for you, a great start to a Christmas morning! 

We actually had visitors stay for a week and they kept asking for that bread every morning, despite having a lot of breakfast options and even asked for the recipe, so I suppose it is a bit of a hit recipe.

This bread is dairy free, wheat free and high in fibre. Sweet potatoes are also high in vitamin A and Flaxseed is a good source of Omega 3.  Plus, because the sweet potatoes are sweet in taste and because of the dates, there is no added sugars. 

It is really really easy to make, the only thing that is a bit time consuming, is potentially the sweet potato pure. What I normally do is, when using the oven for dinner anyway, I just bake the sweet potatoes at the same time, pure them and place it in the fridge in an airtight container for baking the bread the next day.

Ingredients: 

400ml Sweet potato pure (from about 750g of raw sweet potatoes)

150 plain tasting oil, like light olive oil.

2 eggs

150ml water

150ml orange or lemon juice

250g white spelt flour (click here to read more about why I use spelt flour)

150g wholemeal spelt flour

6 tablespoons of ground flaxseeds

150g oats

1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground allspice

4 teaspoons cinnamon

100g dates pitted and roughly chopped

100g pecans or walnuts roughly chopped

Simply place the sweet potatoes in a 200C oven, with the skin on, but pierce a few times with a fork or knife and bake for 30-40 minutes, depending on size. Leave to cool, until they are not to hot to handle. Peal of the skin and blend to a pure.

Preheat oven to 175C and line a 2 litre size bread loaf tin with baking paper.

Simply whisk all the wet ingredients together (except the orange/lemon juice) and mix all the dry ingredients, plus the dates and nuts in another bowl. Then simply stir in the wet ingredients into the dry, using a big string spoon and stir until well combined.

Then just before poring into the bread tin, add the orange/lemon juice to the batter an fold it in. This activates the bicarbonate of soda, so you want to do this just before baking, so you don’t lose any air bobbles.

Bake for about 1 hour and 15 minutes. 

Let the bread cool in the tin, then slice and serve or freeze.

Note: When toasting a slice from the freezer (this obviously depends on what you use to toast with), but I normally toast for a few minutes, then leave it for about 5-10 minutes and then toast again for a few minutes. let it cool a little and then add your favourite spread.