Published in The Clifton Courier March 29, 2017

Recently I made sweet potato brownies, and I want to share my journey with you.

And this time I do mean “journey” in the way musical talent shows use it: not as a way to describe a distance, but an emotional transformation.

I found the recipe on Facebook, no doubt as a result of following someone fit enough to shame me into not eating a family-sized pie. When I lived alone in the cold, cold isolation of Armidale I found myself doing this often. I stopped when I realised I was skipping the cooking part and just gorging on raw pastry, as if in an attempt to fill the black hole that was my soul with butter.

Anyway, the recipe didn’t seem laden with ridiculously expensive ingredients, so I gave it a crack.

The recipe called for one cup of mashed sweet potato, so I cut the mouldy/questionably damp parts off the spud in my fridge. It was about the size of a slightly-malnourished guinea pig (which needs to a standard unit of measurement, if you ask me). I peeled, sliced and diced, then boiled it in a saucepan.

To test if they were ready for mashing, I plunged my knife into the cubes like I would the necks of my enemies. When the blade easily pierced their imaginary jugulars, I removed them from the heat and drained them. I then threw them into a food processor, because I apparently am not content with simply slaying my enemies, I must also pulverise them.

In a saucepan, I then added half a cup of the nut butter of my choice (I went with peanut) to two tablespoons of maple syrup.

Now, maple syrup is the saviour of sugar-haters as it as sweet as the taste of victory without added white stuff. But you have to get the actual sap and not just the maple-flavoured syrup – otherwise you’re just a pleb choking your veins with the sugary nectar of Satan. I bought the all-natural maple although I’m sure the sugary sin juice would work just fine.

I melted these two together in the saucepan, but I reckon I could have done it with a mug and a microwave with less fuss.

I then added this pretentious paste to the pureed potato.

The recipe also calls for a quarter cup of cocoa powder, but I had this amazing Christmassy chocolate ginger powder sitting in a jar so I used that. It came from a shop that made me feel like a fancy soccer mum with a beautiful kitchen who knows things about food, which made me forget that I was spending money I should have been putting towards replacing my saggy, holey undies. Needless to say, just having that jar on my counter boosts my self-esteem phenomenally.

Anyway, you’re supposed to then blend all this gunk up together until you have a cohesive gunk.

The recipe calls for a handful of cacao nibs to be folded in at this point. Cacao is brown stuff healthy people pretend tastes like chocolate, but I would describe the flavour as “dirt plus sadness”. As such, I roughly chopped two rows of Dairy Milk. I also added a gorilla-sized handful of chopped walnuts.

I stupidly used my food processor instead of folding them in, so my walnuts weren’t chunky. Don’t do what I did. You want the chunks. Chunks are what make life good.

After adding more chopped nuts, I poured it into a baking dish and then placed it into a 180 degree oven for about 20 minutes. You’re supposed to let it cook all the way through, but I like brownies to be cooked to the point where they’re just crusty enough on the outside to not be considered raw mixture. I’m not going to tell you how to live your life, but I will tell you that you’re living life wrong if you thoroughly cook a brownie.

After this was sufficiently cooled, I cut myself a piece and told myself I was eating vegetables.

I urge you to do the same.