Sweet Potato Bread

Its a snowy day so its some sort of law I'm supposed to bake, right? Oh wait maybe the law is about preparing food in advance of giving birth... Well either way I did. 

My husband is a good man who usually eats anything I cook without complaint. But for some bizarre reason he does not love sweet potatoes. This is very odd to me; they are so tasty. And a hassle because we get a lot of sweet potatoes from the CSA. He can usually be coaxed to eat them, but he never really enjoys them. Meanwhile we had some monster huge ones that needed eating.

I got a massive, and so far seemingly really good, cookbook for Christmas (Good Housekeeping Step By Step Cooking) which I've been perusing lately. I saw an interesting looking recipe for sweet potato biscuits which I considered. But I've been in a mood for sweets, muffins, cakes, etc. So I decided on sweet potato bread. Mind you this is not a recipe in the book. But then to me, recipes are mere suggestions, not rules. I figured I could modify the banana bread recipe.

Of course in the spirit of suggestive recipes, I changed a few other ingredients as well, mostly based on the reality of what I had on hand. All purpose flour was switched for mostly whole wheat, butter was joined with coconut oil due to a lack of enough butter, brown sugar mixed with regular sugar because I just opened a new bag and want to use it before it hardens. And I added chocolate chunks, because I had some and why not? Oh and I doubled the recipe to accommodate having 2 cups worth of sweet potato (and to have an extra loaf for freezing). The cinnamon blend is something I've mentioned before and always have on hand (mostly cinnamon, mixed with some ginger, nutmeg and clove). Much of the directions however are from the cookbook.

The result is delicious. And nutritious. And enough to enjoy some now, and freeze one loaf for next month when I'm dealing with two newborns and in no mood to cook. And finally, husband approved.

Sweet Potato Bread (makes 2 loaves)
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup all purpose flour
2 tsp cinnamon blend
1.5 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
8 tbsp butter, softened
1 tbsp coconut oil
4 eggs
2 cups cooked, mashed sweet potato
1/2 cup water
chopped walnuts and semi-sweet chocolate chunks (about 1/2 cup total)

Pre-heat oven to 350.
In a big bowl whisk together the flours, cinnamon blend, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
Using a mixer (I used a KitchenAid stand mixer with the whisk attachment), blend the sugars, butter, oil and eggs on low, then increase to high speed for 5 minutes. Reduce the speed to medium-low and add the sweet potato and water. Mix until well blended. Then slowly add the flour mixture until incorporated. Finally mix in the nuts and chocolate.
Pour the mix into two greased loaf pans. (Its ok if it looks like the pans are only half full, it rises quite a bit). Bake for about 50 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.