Sweet potato and oatmeal “cake”

One thing about being on a diet is that you start to crave the crap you can’t have. My diet right now is pretty sparse on starchy carbs and fat. I can get over the lack of fat pretty easily just by adding flavor to my foods. You see a lot of fitness nuts going gaga over Mrs. Dash seasonings…and believe me, when you can’t have salt or oil a little Mrs. Dash extra spicy and garlic herb goes a long way. The starchy thing however is another story. The carbs in my diet pretty much come from veggies (asparagus, green beans, broccoli) and brown rice, sweet potato, oatmeal and grits. There’s NO white flour anywhere in my meal plan even all of the “flourless cake/cookie/pancake” recipes that you find on gluten-free websites are so full of sugar (from white sugar, agave nectar, maple syrup) that they are out for my current diet situation.

So last night I was sitting up and thinking about when I make sweet potato pie (the full monty with butter, sugar and delicious buttery flour-y crust) I usually will have made a little too much pie filling and will bake it off in a pyrex dish. Even though it lacks flour (I don’t use flour in my sweet potato pie filling) it still rises and has a soft cake or spoon bread like consistency. In a word: Delicious.

So I thought, sweet potatoes are in the meal plan, so are eggs, cinnamon, and nutmeg…that’s almost like sweet potato pie filling…(well not at all…but desperate times call for suspension of reality). So I whipped up a quick “spoon bread” or soft cake using all legal meal plan ingredients just so that I can have a little taste of comfort food. I ate a serving of this for breakfast this morning along side 2 egg whites. Felt like cheating but it wasn’t.

Again, I’m not a chef…I’m just sharing the results of a culinary experiment 🙂

What you will need:

1 orange fleshed sweet potato (pick one with pointy ends – these are usually sweeter – that’s about 300g or so)

2 packets of PureVia sweetener

1/4 cup of Bob’s Redmill gluten-free oats

1 pinch of cinnamon (or to taste)

1 pinch of ground nutmeg (or to taste)

non-stick lo-calorie baking spray or well seasoned cast iron skillet

4 egg whites

1 whole egg

Fork

2 Medium sized bowls

Small pyrex dish or well seasoned cast iron skillet

Directions:

1 – Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2 – Microwave sweet potato for 6 minutes turning every 2 minutes until soft on all sides

3- Mash sweet potato with fork in medium sized bowl

4- Add nutmeg, cinnamon, and truvia sweetener and mix well. Taste here to make sure you have your desired level of spice and sweetness.

5- In a separate bowl, whip 4 egg whites and 1 whole egg until fluffy (like you’re scrambling eggs). You can use the same fork that you mashed your tater with, save yourself some dishes)

6- Add egg mixture to sweet potato and mix until smooth.

7- Add 1/4 cup of oatmeal and mix well (The batter should be smooth and wet like cake batter – not dough-y).

8- Lightly coat a pyrex dish with non-stick baking spray and add sweet potato mix to dish. Spread evenly

9- bake for 10 minutes at 350 degrees or until set.

Serves 3. Nutrition facts: Calories/serving: 174 :: Carbs: 29 (5g of fiber):: Fat: 3 :: Protein: 10

 

Because of the consistency of the batter, I’m thinking I might also be able to make these into pancakes for the morning time. I’ve been meaning to try out walden farms 0 calorie syrups and I think this might be just the vehicle for that…more to come on that 🙂