Daring Baker's Challenge - Feb. 2012: Quick Bread

Things have been slow around here.  School is hard!  I feel like I've done plenty of baking, but either it wasn't blog worthy, or didn't take pictures.  I do have a couple of yummy things pending, though!

The Daring Bakers’ February 2012 host was – Lis! Lisa stepped in last minute and challenged us to create a quick bread we could call our own. She supplied us with a base recipe and shared some recipes she loves from various websites and encouraged us to build upon them and create new flavor profiles.

I was cool with this month's challenge -- I could do my own thing, and keep the ingredient budget under control.  Besides that, quick breads are great!  Who doesn't love a good slice of banana bread?  But, sorry, no banana bread here.  We've been on a smoothie kick around here, so no over ripe bananas.  But I did have a single, sad sweet potato staring at me, left over from sometime before Christmas.

I didn't have a recipe for sweet potato bread, but found a recipe for pumpkin bread.  I figured that would be closest to what I was looking for, and already had a starting point to balance the measurements of cinnamon and nutmeg.

It was more orange colored in real life.

This was so good!  It tasted like sweet potato pie but in a nice dense cakey package. 
Sweet Potato Loaf
Adapted from Streaming Gourmet

Makes 1 9x5 loaf
Ingredients:
3/4 c whole wheat flour
1 tsp cinnamon
.5 tsp nutmeg
.25 tsp salt
.5 tsp baking soda
.25 tsp baking powder
1.5 c sugar
.5 c browned butter
2 eggs
1 medium/large sweet potato, roasted and mashed (about 1 cup)
nuts are optional


My modifications: Obviously, I swapped in sweet potato for pumpkin. I halved the recipe and used 2 eggs.  I also used all whole wheat flour instead of the all purpose flour.  The original recipe called for ground cloves.  I only had whole cloves with no way to grind them, so I left them out.

Directions:
1.  Preheat oven to 350F.  Spray loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray.
2.  In medium bowl, combine the dry ingredients.
3.  Cream the butter and sugar.  Add eggs one at a time until well combined.
4.  Add the mashed sweet potato and mix until combined.
5.  In batches, add the dry ingredients.  Mix just until combined.
6.  Pour batter into prepared pan.  Bake for 55-60 minutes until cake tester comes out clean.
7.  Let cool in the pan for 10-15 minutes.  Turn the loaf out onto a cooling rack.  Cool completely.
8.  Enjoy!