Shrek muffins aka sweet potato muffins



green ogre vs green muffins



Shriek!  Shriek muffins?  Shrek muffins?  Bright green muffins!   How on earth did purple sweet potatoes morph into green muffins which resembled a certain Disney Dreamworks ogre? I swear they started out as purple-gray batter. 

I had some purple sweet potato and thought of turning them into muffins this time.  The last recipe I made with sweet potatoes was turning them into steamed sweet potato buns.  This recipe called for the orange variety, but I thought nevermind… can substitute-lah.  Orange or purple, still sweet potato.  Just different colours.  What can go wrong?

from purple sweet potato

to green sweet potato muffins

Hah.  And go wrong it did.  It turned green.  I thought it was the oven light playing tricks on me.  Luckily it was a bright green, almost a lovely deep emerald.  Not any pale seasick green.  I turned green when I saw them.  My parents keeled over laughing.  My cousins went overboard. 

For this post, I thought I’ll share something different instead.  You hear and read a fair amount of success stories, but no one really likes to bring up their failed stories.  Sweet is success but it is failures that you learn from.  I’ve had my fair share of bombs, but this was one of the more spectacular and dramatic outcomes.  Naturally this episode prompted some research (and what better resource than the www) and with a few clicks, voila – the answer.  Drum roll....

Purple sweet potatoes turn green after baking because it reacts to the presence of baking soda and baking powder.  Aha.  Learnt something, right?

Looking at the brighter side, it wasn’t so bad after all.  So what if it was green?  It is all natural, no artificial colouring used.  With sweet potatoes, the muffins had a naturally high fibre content.  Perhaps I could tempt a leprechaun with it and reserve it for St Pat’s next year?

In case you are wondering, no, I didn’t forget to insert the recipe for this.  I’m not sharing the recipe because I wasn’t happy with the muffin texture.  The recipe needs some work.

Go on, have a laugh...