Whether you enjoy sweet potatoes or not, you will flip over this amazing Sweet Potato Bread Recipe. It’s a quick bread, which means its easy and you really can’t mess it up (in my opinion). One of my favorite things about making this is watching others enjoy it and then having them guess what it is. No one ever guesses “sweet potato”.
This amazing sweet potato bread recipe is moist, like perfectly moist (because of the added sweet potato water), and spiced beautifully with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cardamom. This is one of those dessert breads that you’ll be making again and again all year long.
Sweet potatoes are highly nutritious. They are packed with Vitamin A as well as a good amount of Vitamin C, Manganese and other vitamins and nutrients. and baking them into something like this only reduces those benefits by approximately 70%. Funny enough boiling the potato does leech out some benefits however in the end it lowers their glycemic index making them have less of an insulin spike. Not that that really matters for this recipe because of the added sugars. I just find that interesting.
I just figure if you are going to eat something like a cake, why not have a powerhouse food like sweet potato or pumpkin in there to help a bit. It’s all about the ying and the yang, right??
Bake this in one loaf pan like this or in mini loaf pans for faster baking time and sharing. You can also bake as muffins in silicone baking cups.
How to make Sweet Potato Quick Bread
- Cut one large or two smaller sweet potato’s into chunks and boil for 15-20 minutes or until tender when pierced with a fork.
- reserve 1/4 cup of the sweet potato water and drain potatoes.
- When ready to mix the batter combine mashed sweet potatoes, eggs, oil, buttermilk, sugars and spices in mixing bow and mix until combined.
- Add in flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt and mix until combined and smooth.
- Line baking pan with parchment paper and scrape batter in.
- Make streusel topping by combining oats, butter, spices and brown sugar.
- Sprinkle streusel on batter and bake at 350 for 55-60 minutes.
- Allow it to cool for 5 minutes and then lift out the loaf and allow it to cool further.
- Delicious warm.
Tips when making Sweet Potato Bread
- Get potatoes out of the water as soon as they are cooked
- Mash right away (not in the hot pot), add the reserved liquid, tent with foil or wrap and allow to cool slightly before mixing
- This is a forgiving recipe, if you have a little under 1.5 cups of mashed sweet potatoes, it is fine. same goes if you add a little over
- Don’t be afraid of the spices, the beauty of this bread is the amazing spice flavor
- Choose to top with a quick oatmeal streusel or not
- If you choose to not top with a streusel, you may want to up the brown sugar in the batter by 1 TBS
- Line your baking pan with parchment. You want to be able to lift this bread out so you don’t lose or damage the streusel. Plus its always a good idea to lift out any dense baked good. Keeps it perfectly intact
- This bread takes a solid hour to bake up and makes a large loaf, often I make 3 muffins from the batter as well without topping. Stills bakes up a beautiful large loaf as you see here
Variations to Sweet Potato Bread Recipe
- You can change up which spices you add to this bread, swapping out one for another. You can add things like allspice, pumpkin spice, star anise, etc. However after tinkering over the years I do feel that the recommended spices in the recipe are spot on
- Make the recommended streusel or leave it out. It just lends added sweetness, texture and crunch which we enjoy
- You can double or triple streusel and create a middle layer if you wish
- You can swap out the sweet potato for pumpkin (pure pumpkin) if you wish
If you enjoy making quick breads, check out some of my favorite quick bread recipes:
Cheesy Bacon Jalapeno Quick Bread
Sweet Potato Bread Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups mashed sweet potato (mashed with 2 TBS of reserved sweet potato water)
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 cup oil
- 1/3 cup buttermilk
- 1 TBS vanilla
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1 TBS cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon ginger
- 1 teaspoon cardamom
- pinch of salt
- 1 3/4 cup flour plus 1 TBS
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
Streusel Topping
- 1/2 cup oats
- 1 1/2 TBS brown sugar
- 2 TBS butter, room temp
- 1 tsp spice mixture (1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 nutmeg,1/8 tsp cardamom, 1/8 ginger)
Instructions
- Peel one large or2 smaller sweet potatoes, cut in small chunks and boil for approximately 15 minutes or until fork tender.
- Reserve 1/4 cup of sweet potato liquid.
- Drain potatoes right away, mash, add 2 TBS of liquid and set aside to cool.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- When ready to mix, place in mixing bowl sweet potatoes, eggs, oil, buttermilk, vanilla, white and brown sugar and mix until combined.
- Add in flour, spices, salt, baking powder and baking soda and mix until smooth.
- Line a loaf pan with parchment paper and scrape batter into pan.
- Combine streusel ingredients and with a fork, or fingers mix until combined and crumbly. Top batter in loaf pan with streusel and bake for 55-1 hour or until done.
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