Categories: Desserts

Sweet “Potato” Dessert

This is a no bake dessert from my childhood: one of the easiest to do (you can do it with you child together) with ingredients which were easily available at that time. I think I grew up with condensed milk, cookies and butter.

We called these “sweet potatoes”, I guess mostly because of the color and form. I think the closest equivalent to this recipe in English would be “rum balls” if you make them with rum and form balls instead of “potato” shapes.

Of course, if you make this dessert for kids, skip alcohol.

Ingredients:

  • 1lb of shortbread cookies (tea or coffee cookies in slavic part of the world)
  • 8oz of butter, softened at room temperature
  • 8oz of sweet condensed milk
  • 3 teaspoons of cocoa powder
  • 1 tablespoon of cognac or rum or wine (optional)
  • Pine nuts or peanuts for decoration (optional)

How to prepare, step-by-step:

  1. Prepare ingredients:
    Sweet “Potato” Dessert Recipe: Step 1
  2. In a mixing bowl, mash softened butter with a fork, add all condensed milk:
    Sweet “Potato” Dessert Recipe: Step 2
  3. And mix until homogeneous (mixer can be used for this step):
    Sweet “Potato” Dessert Recipe: Step 3
  4. Add cocoa powder and mix:
    Sweet “Potato” Dessert Recipe: Step 4
  5. Mix in cognac (like me), or rum, wine or skip this step:
    Sweet “Potato” Dessert Recipe: Step 5
  6. In a bigger mixing bowl crumble cookies. I used potato masher, but you can do it in food processor, meat mincer, blender, whatever works for you:
    Sweet “Potato” Dessert Recipe: Step 6
  7. You want to get small crumbles without big pieces of cookies left:
    Sweet “Potato” Dessert Recipe: Step 7
  8. Add butter and condensed milk mix to the bowl:
    Sweet “Potato” Dessert Recipe: Step 8
  9. And mix everything, you don’t want mixture to be too liquid or desserts will be stiff, add couple cookies more if needed to prevent it:
    Sweet “Potato” Dessert Recipe: Step 9
  10. Scoop a portion of batter with a tablespoon, press it into a ball with your hands and then form a “potato” shape:
    Sweet “Potato” Dessert Recipe: Step 10
  11. Repeat with all batter:
    Sweet “Potato” Dessert Recipe: Step 11
  12. Arrange pine nuts or peanuts on top of each “potato” to imitate sprouts and put all “potatoes” to fridge for 4-5 hours:
    Sweet “Potato” Dessert Recipe: Step 12
  13. Then serve as dessert with tea or coffee:
    Sweet “Potato” Dessert Recipe
Enjoy!