It is with great delight that I introduce guest blogger Ingrid.
Ingrid blogs at From Ingrid, With Love. She loves cooking with her husband and filling her Minneapolis home with the smell of freshly baked bread. When she’s not in the kitchen, you can find her exploring her home state or curled up with a good book and a cup of tea.
Hello, friends! My name is Ingrid, and Kami is letting me take over the blog today! I blog about food and life in my hometown of Minneapolis at From Ingrid, With Love. I’m so excited to work with another awesome Minnesota blogger, and to share a delicious recipe with all of you!
My husband and I love food and we love cooking together. Most nights we walk in the door after work and head straight for the kitchen to start on dinner. But with laundry and chores and other responsibilities, we don’t have a lot of time on weeknights and have to save most of our cooking adventures for the weekend. We have so many recipes to try, entire Pinterest boards of ideas saved for the weekend.
One of those ideas was gnocchi. Even the word gnocchi sounds scrumptious. Light, pillow-ly potato dumplings in sauce – what’s not to love? I tried to make gnocchi once a few months ago and it was a messy disaster and lots of work (and dishes to clean) for a disappointing result.
Traditionally, gnocchi is rolled out and painstakingly sliced into individual pieces and then boiled. I loved the idea of sweet potato and ricotta gnocchi, but they were far too fragile to boil and required too much time, patience, and olive oil to fry. (Technically, since my little sweet potato dumplings contain ricotta they are actually gnudi, but we can keep that between us. I tried to fry them (as the original recipe suggested) but it took an incredible amount of oil and patience. The solution, baked gnocchi!
I used a tablespoon to measure out even amounts of dough and rolled them into balls. After 15 minutes in the oven, they were a dark, brilliant hue of orange with a thin crust and fluffy interior. These baked sweet potato gnocchi are delightful on their own.
The pumpkin sauce is savory and bold. A little bit goes a long way. I love how different the sweet potato gnocchi and pumpkin sauce taste separately, and then together they complement each other beautifully. The color of the sweet potato gnocchi is stunning. You can see how bright and vivid they are in the photos – no editing or fancy photography tricks, they really are that vibrant in real life.
This sweet potato gnocchi is definitely do-able on a weeknight. Start to finish, the recipe takes about an hour, but there’s a lot of downtime; perfect for straightening up the kitchen, emptying the dishwasher, setting the table and doing the dishes before dinner is even served. These are all things that need to be done anyway, so this recipe doesn’t distract from my weeknight to-do list. And while rolling out gnocchi sounds time-consuming, it goes very quickly. If you have kids who like helping in the kitchen, they can help roll gnocchi! The texture of the chilled dough is very similar to play dough – easy to form without being sticky.
Sweet Potato Gnocchi
Ingredients
For the gnocchi:
- 2 cups cooked, mashed sweet potatoes
- ½ cup part-skim ricotta, drained
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- ½ tsp ground nutmeg
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- ¼ tsp black pepper
- pinch of salt
For the sauce:
- 1 tsp olive oil
- ½ medium onion, chopped
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 1 cup pumpkin puree
- ½ cup skim milk (or unsweetened almond milk)
- ¼ tsp ground cinnamon
- ¼ tsp ground nutmeg
- ¼ tsp ground ginger
- ¼ tsp ground cloves
Instructions
- Instructions
- First, prepare sweet potatoes. Peel two large sweet potatoes and cut into one inch cubes.
- a. Stovetop - Gently boil sweet potatoes for 15-20 minutes until fork tender
- b. Microwave - Place cubed sweet potato in a microwave safe bowl, add ½ cup water. Cover and microwave 6-8 minutes, or until fork tender.
- Drain sweet potatoes and let cool. Mash sweet potatoes until smooth and measure 2 cups of mashed sweet potato for gnocchi.
- Add all gnocchi ingredients to a large bowl and mix thoroughly until well combined.
- Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes (10 minutes minimum - cold dough is easier to handle).
- While gnocchi dough chills, prepare sauce.
- In a large sauce pan, sauté onions and garlic with olive oil until onions are translucent.
- Add remaining ingredients and cook for 4-5 minutes, stirring frequently.
- Remove from heat and blend sauce in a blender until smooth.
- Set sauce aside and reheat over medium heat 1-2 minutes before serving.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
- Remove dough from the refrigerator. Roll dough into tablespoon size balls.
- Place gnocchi on a greased pan, and sprinkle with a pinch of nutmeg and cinnamon.
- Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until the gnocchi balls are bright orange and no longer sticky.
- Serve gnocchi with a spoonful of pumpkin sauce
- Enjoy!
Recipe adapted from the FIXATE Cookbook
You can find a PDF version of this recipe here.
Thank you again for Kami for letting me guest post today, and thank YOU for joining us! If you enjoyed this recipe, I’d love if you visit From Ingrid, With Love to say hello!
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Yummmm! I love sweet potato gnocchi. Have you ever had it with sage brown butter? Mmmmmm
Yum! I love gnocchi but I have not tried them this way before! 🙂
I bet this would be a fun recipe for kids to make! Always fun when you can play with your food 😉