FAST Blog: Family Homestead

Permaculture, Preparedness, Homesteading & Survival

Monday, 19 December 2016

Smokey Maple Sweet Potato Bites - Vegan Snack

As we entered the festive season full steam ahead, I was craving a snack that was sweet, savory, healthy and DELICIOUS. All. Boxes. Ticked. With Logan being a veggie, and Rori being such a hungry kid, I needed something they could both snack on that felt like a treat, but actually was pretty good for them. With chocolate and other sugar-ladened sweets being literally everywhere you look in the shops at this time of year, I needed something to balance out the daily consumption of advent calendar choccies.

Enter the Smokey Maple Roasted Sweet Potato Bites. Little bites of delight. This is the sort of thing you can make a batch of, have some in a salad, and snack on the rest of those sticky, soft, crispy cubes whilst watching a movie. They are that good, they rival popcorn.

Sweetness from the maple. smokey from the paprika, little crunchy salty crispy roasted edges, soft and buttery sweet centre. These remind me in flavour of bacon  - not in a meaty way, but in a smokey sweet way. A good way. Logan's pleased as the only meaty thing he misses as a veggie is the flavour of bacon. AND these are vegan too! Winner,winner. Mummy points times infinity. 

I made a big bowl of these and they were gone within minutes. Rori couldn't even keep her hands off of them long enough for me to take a picture. Can I blame her? Nope!

So if you are in need of some smokey sweet vegan  goodness, grab your sweet potato and let's get snacking my friends.

You Will Need:
- 1 large sweet potato, cut into smallish cubes
- 2 tbsp Maple syrup
- 1 heaped tsp smoked paprika (normal paprika will work too, but smoked paprika gives that lovely smokey quality)
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- big pinch sea salt

What you need to do:
Heat your oven to 180  degrees. Grab your sweet potato and peel it. Cut into smallish cubes, roughly uniform in size. Get your roasting dish or tray, You'll want one large enough to have the cubes of potato more or less on one layer so they go nice and crispy. 
Pop the cubes into your roasting dish. drizzle over the olive oil, maple syrup and smoked paprika. Get your hands in there and give the cubes a good mix, rubbing them all around and getting them evenly coated.
When well coated, use your fingers to spread the cubes out, giving them a little space to make sure they roast and not steam. Sprinkle your salt over the coated cubes evenly.
Chuck your dish into the middle of your oven. They will take 20-30 minutes to roast depending on how large your cubes are and how crispy you want them.*
Stir every 10 minutes to make sure they roast evenly and don't stick, and that they aren't getting burnt.
They're done when they are soft in the middle, nicely browned, with little crispy edges of hsppiness happening. 

Serve in place of croutons in a lovely salad with rocket and sun dried tomatoes, as a side in your favourite lunch bowl, stirred through quinoa, or my favourite - in a big bowl in front of the TV.

*If they are cooking, but not going crispy, knock your oven temperature up a little. 
*If they are colouring but not cooking, knock the temperature down a little.

So give these a try and see for yourself how this humble vegetable can be turned into this winner of a vegan snack. Then tell all of your friends about your new favourite healthy snack and have a Smokey-Maple-Sweet-Potato-Bite-Movie-Night-Party and spread the happiness!





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