Japanese Sweet Potato Mocha Smoothie ~ Date Sweetened ~ WFPB

Who knew a healthy plant powered smoothie could be this decadently sweet and creamy! Oven roasted Japanese sweet potatoes create a velvety smooth texture reinforcing the caramel-like flavor of whole dates. Instant coffee conveniently balances with chocolaty cocoa powder for an explosion of mocha flavor. Your choice of nut butter makes this smoothie irresistibly rich while boosting protein.

WHY JAPANESE SWEET POTATOES?

First I want to say that I love using all kinds of cooked sweet potatoes and yams in smoothies because they create a velvety creamy texture while adding natural sweetness. Japanese sweet potatoes are one of my favorites to use because they’re incredibly sweet, tasting like a dessert in their own right. Their neutral light cream color also makes them particularly versatile. But if you can’t find Japanese sweet potatoes, you can make this smoothie with another type of sweet potato or yam. I suggest you go with the sweetest type of sweet potato or yam that you can find.

BAKE SWEET POTATOES AHEAD OF TIME

You’ll need a cup of pre-cooked Japanese sweet potato for this recipe, and that means thinking ahead. I’ve noticed that yams and sweet potatoes, even when kept in the fridge, don’t last as long as other root vegetables like beets or white potatoes. This is especially true if you buy organic. What I like to do is to bake up a batch as soon as I get them back from the store. Then I keep them in a sealed container in the fridge for up to a week and snack on them or use them in recipes as needed.

My favorite way to cook yams and sweet potatoes is in the oven at 350 F°, on a parchment paper covered cookie sheet, for at least an hour and up to an hour and a half. Larger yams and sweet potatoes require more cooking time. The idea is to cook them until they are very soft with a lot of give when you squeeze them. They need to be soft so that you can cut them in half lengthwise and scoop out the mushy inside to use in recipes like this one where you don’t want the peels. For a step by step guide to cooking sweet potatoes and yams click here.

DATES AS SWEETENERS

My sweet recipes get most of their sweetness from whole dried fruits. And my go to dried fruits for sweetening recipes are dates. Dates are intensely sweet with a rich caramel-like flavor that blends in seamlessly with other ingredients. From a nutritional standpoint, dates are a whole plant food packed with fiber and a symphony of other nutrients.

CHOOSING & PREPPING DATES

My favorite dates for recipes are pitted Deglet Noor because they are sweet, flavorful, widely available and usually soft and moist. You can also use any other type of dates by prepping and measuring them in the same way as you would Deglet Noor. When using dates in smoothies, I always begin by chopping them. I have found that dates that are supposedly pitted are, in fact, usually not all pitted. Chopping dates gives me the opportunity to remove any hidden pits and hard stems that may still be attached. When dates will be blitzed in a blender, chopping them first helps them be processed more quickly and effectively. Finally, chopping allows for greater consistency in measuring. Once the dates are chopped they can be more closely packed into a measuring cup.

NUT BUTTER OPTIONS

You can use almost any type of nut butter for this smoothie. And not just nut butters! Sunflower seed butter or tahini also work and are terrific choices in terms of flavor and nutrients, or if you have to avoid tree nuts due to an allergy. The only type of nut butter I don’t recommend in this particular smoothie is peanut butter. That’s because peanut butter has a strong flavor that overwhelms everything around it and I think this smoothie should be all about the mocha instead of tasting like a mocha peanut butter cup. But hey, that’s just me. Some peanut butter lovers might argue that a mocha peanut butter cup smoothie is a great idea.

WHOLESOME COCOA POWDER

Rejoice! Cocoa powder is a whole plant food with a number of nutritional benefits. Although processing is involved, cocoa powder is derived from whole seeds of the cacao tree, and retains many of the nutrients present before processing including fiber, antioxidants and minerals like iron, magnesium, copper and zinc. There are two types of cocoa powder: natural and Dutch-processed, a.k.a. European-style cocoa powder. If you want to maximize the nutritional benefits of cocoa powder, go for natural instead of Dutch-processed because in removing some of the acidity, the Dutch processing technique also decreases flavanol content. And flavanols are powerful antioxidants with a variety of health enhancing benefits. But that doesn’t mean that Dutch-processed cocoa is bad for you, only that it’s a little less good. Natural cocoa powder will always be more acidic. If the tang bothers you, then go with Dutch-processed.

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