Recipe Thursday -Sweet Potato Pancake & Lemon Smoothie

Cooked sweet potatoes were sitting in the fridge just daring me to find a fun and tasty recipe for them.  I pulled out one of my favourite vegetable go-to cookbooks, The Victory Garden Cookbook by Marian Morash and started looking.  This is a wonderful cookbook for vegetables as it is divided by vegetable.   My copy is a first edition from 1982, though there is a new printing from 2010 available. 

Each section starts with general information about the vegetable including how to grow it.  Next you learn about basic cooking and then there are recipes where the vegetable is the main ingredient.  I decided that sweet potato pancakes would fill my family's tummys nicely.  I made the waffle recipe and cooked it in pancake form.

Sweet Potato Waffles

This recipe makes light waffles; you can use the same batter for pancakes, but note that they will be fat and flyffy rather than thin and firm.

1/4 cup butter
1 1/2 cups flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
3 eggs, separated
1 cup milk
1 cup mashed cooked sweet potatoes

Melt butter; set it aside to cool slightly.  Sift dry indredients together.  Beat egg yolks, then combine with milk, sweet potatoes, and melted butter.  Stir in dry ingredients.  Beat egg whites until they form soft peaks.  Fold into sweet potato mixture.  Cook on a preheated waffle iron as instructed by manufacturer.  ( I found the batter rather thick and had to spread it on the pan, next time I would add an additional spoon of milk).

A few weeks ago I came across a site called The Smoothie Handbook.  It has recipes for more smoothies than I can make in many months.  I have printed out their free book and tried a couple of combinations.  I also signed up to receive weekly mailings.  In one of the recent mailings there was a recipe for a Lemon Smoothie.  This interested me.  Lemon is such a refreshing flavour I just had to try it.

Lemon Smoothie

1 lemon peeled, seeds removed
1 banana, peeled, can be frozen
1/2 cup water
sweetener of your choice (I used 3 dates soaked overnight in water and 1 good spoon of honey)

Put in blender and mix well.

I also added 1 scoop of rice protein powder.  The taste of this smoothie was rather tart even with the two sweeteners.  I had to strain it to remove the white membrane from the lemon.  This was not a favourite smoothie for my family.  My son wouldn't touch it and daughter had to add 2 more spoons of sugar.  The concept of it seemed wonderful, but the reality was too different.  Note that the other recipes we tried, we all found quite enjoyable.  I think it's realistic to share with my readers that not everything I make turns out as expected.

Are you in need of a foodie fix, hops on over to Beth Fish Reads for her wonderfully informative Weekend Cooking.  You'll find links to all sorts of food related posts.  Add a link to your own recent post.