Upside-Down Pear

I’ve had a cup and a half of mashed bourbon sweet potatoes sitting in my fridge since Monday-ish, and today I got around to using them.  There are lots of options for using up mashed sweet potatoes — you can usually sub them one-for-one in recipes calling for mashed pumpkin, butternut squash, or bananas, for example.

I found a recipe for molasses pumpkin bread, changed it around to suit myself, and made it.  Mmmmm.

Ingredients
Dry
* 1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
* 1 tablespoon cinnamon (true cinnamon, if you have it)
* 1 1/2 teaspoon ginger
* 1 tsp five-spice powder
* 3/4 teaspoon nutmeg
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 3/4 teaspoon salt
* 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
* 1/8 teaspoon black pepper

Wet
* 6 tablespoons softened unsalted butter
* 2/3 cup blackstrap molasses
* 2 eggs
* 1 1/2 cup mashed sweet potatoes (leftover is fine, even if pretty heavily spiced)
* 1/4 cup milk
* 3/4 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F, and grease a 9×5 loaf pan.

Whisk together the first 8 ingredients.

In a separate bowl (preferably in a stand mixer), beat the butter for a minute or so, then gradually beat in the molasses.  Because blackstrap molasses is so dark, it won’t lighten like brown sugar or lighter molasses does, so keep an eye on it and beat in the eggs, one at a time, when the butter and molasses look well-blended.

Beat in the sweet potatoes, milk, and vanilla.

Add in the flour mixture and stir until just combined (by hand is better than in the mixer).

Pour batter into prepared loaf pan and bake for about 1 hour.  (Always check center with a skewer or clean knife before removing from oven!)

Cool 5 minutes in pan, then run a knife blade around the edges and unmold.  Place on wire rack to cool the rest of the way.

Nat claims that this combines the best aspects of pumpkin pie with the best aspects of gingerbread.  I think it’s not quite right, yet.  I’m toying with the idea of upping the spice levels next time, or possibly modifying Ray’s Wicked Gingerbread into a sweet potato recipe. Just in case I end up with leftover sweet potatoes again, you know?