Cinnamon and Spice Sweet Potato Bread — Wondering what to do with those leftover sweet potatoes? Make this quick bread recipe! Sweet potatoes do a wonderful job of keeping this bread extremely soft and moist. It’s almost like cake it’s so soft, springy, and bouncy!
Table of Contents
Spiced Sweet Potato Quick Bread
Sweet potatoes are always a winner no matter how they’re prepared. But when baked into sweetly spiced soft bread, they become even better.
I had a couple sweet potatoes to use and rather than just roasting them or making fries with them, I mashed them and baked them into bread. I do it with bananas all the time. Why not sweet potatoes?
I was blown away by the results. The bread turned out ridiculously soft, moist, tender, and richly spiced. It’s almost like cake it’s so soft, tender, and springy. If you like carrot cake or pumpkin-based recipes, you’ll love this bread.
It’s easy to make, and no mixer is needed. Stir everything together and pop the loaf into the oven for about an hour. And your house will smell heavenly during that hour.
The sweet potatoes, oil, and buttermilk all do a wonderful job of keeping the bread supremely soft and moist. Although I’ve compared it to cake, it’s not cakey if that makes sense. It doesn’t have an airy, flaky crumb that many cakes have; otherwise known as being dry.
The interior is tender, springy, and bouncey with a dense crumb. The crust is firmer and slightly chewy. Normally I shun crust and edge pieces on bread, but I found myself seeking them out, like chewy edge pieces on brownies.
The bread is sweet, but not too sweet. A slice or two for breakfast, as a snack, or as a healthier after-dinner treat is how we’ve been enjoying it.
The spices are homey and comforting. Warming spices like the cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, and cloves are my favorites. I have to restrain myself from making Molasses Cookies and other similar treats for most of the year because they’re out-of-season, so to speak.
The spices give the bread such great flavor and squelch my cravings. I want to snuggle up on the couch with a blanket and a cup of chai tea to wash it down with.
It’s perfect on it’s own and doesn’t even need butter. It’s that moist and flavorful. But twist my arm and a little butter never hurts. Or try a Vanilla Browned Butter Glaze for an extra treat.
Sweet potatoes can do no wrong.
Sweet Potato Bread Ingredients
This is such a quick and easy recipe for sweet potato bread that calls for very basic ingredients.
To make this sweet potato bread recipe, you’ll need:
- Sweet potatoes
- Water
- Eggs
- Canola oil
- Buttermilk
- Vanilla extract
- All-purpose flour
- Light brown sugar
- Baking soda
- Spices
- Salt
Note: Scroll down to the recipe card section of the post for the ingredients with amounts included and for more complete directions.
How to Make Sweet Potato Bread
If you’ve made pumpkin bread before, you can certainly make a sweet potato loaf!
Full instructions can be found in the recipe card below, but here’s an overview of the baking process:
- Begin by steaming two medium sweet potatoes or one very large sweet potato. Drain off any water that’s pooled, and mash with a fork.
- After the potatoes cool just a bit so you don’t scramble the eggs, crack two eggs over them, add oil, vanilla, buttermilk (or yogurt or sour cream) and whisk.
- In another bowl, combine flour, sugars, baking soda, and a variety of spices.
- Add the wet to the dry, and mix until combined. Take your time and make sure everything is well combined, but use a gentle hand when stirring so you don’t over-develop the gluten, resulting in tougher bread.
- Turn the batter out into a 9×5-inch loaf pan or two 8×4-inch pans. I used one 9×5-inch and will probably opt for two 8×4 loaves next time or bake as a Budnt.
Recipe Variations
One thing I love about this recipe is how easy it is to customize! Here are some simple recipe variations you can try:
- Adjust the spices: I used cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, and cloves. Feel free to mix-and-match the spices based on what you have and enjoy. Try pumpkin pie spice, cardamom, or other favorites.
- Add mix-ins: You can try adding mix-ins like chocolate chips, chopped nuts, or dried fruit.
- Use a different loaf pan: I used a 9×5-inch loaf pan to make this recipe, but two 8×4-inch pans will also work. Or, use a small Bundt pan.
- Make muffins: Skip the loaf pan altogether and make muffins instead! Reduce the bake time to 18 – 22 minutes (use your best judgement when testing for doneness).
Recipe FAQs
Bread will keep at room temperature for up to 1 week. I store my bread by wrapping the completely cooled loaf in plasticwrap, and then placing loaf inside a gallon-sized Ziplock.
I’m sure you can! I imagine this sweet potato spice bread will keep up to 6 months in the freezer.
Possibly, but I’ve only made the recipe as written so I can’t say for sure. If you give this a try, leave me a comment letting me know how your bread turned out!
I can’t say for certain since I’ve only made this recipe as written. However, I imagine you’d need to use a gluten-free flour blend that’s designed for baking rather than something like almond flour (which is far too heavy).
Tips for Making Sweet Potato Bread
If you have another method for steaming sweet potatoes, go for it. I do it in the microwave because it’s fast and easy.
You could roast the sweet potatoes, but that takes almost an hour, the potatoes will be drier from being roasted than steamed, and you’d need to make some tweaks with dry and wet ingredient ratios in your batter.
I love cinnamon and the bread is well-spiced and robust, without being overpowering. Many times sweet potato, pumpkin, or carrot-based cakes and breads can be so bland and blah.
Orange root vegetables are very hearty and can really soak up, and necessitate, plenty of spice. I made sure to account for that, but add spices to taste.
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Cinnamon Sweet Potato Bread
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups mashed sweet potatoes, 2 medium or 1 very large
- 3 tablespoons water
- 2 large eggs
- ½ cup canola or vegetable oil
- ¼ cup buttermilk, or yogurt, Greek yogurt, sour cream, or buttermilk powder
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 ¼ cups granulated sugar
- ¼ cup light brown sugar, packed
- 2 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- ½ teaspoon ground allspice
- ½ teaspoon ground cloves
- pinch salt, optional and to taste
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F. Spray one 9-by-5-inch loaf pan (what I used), or two 8-by-4-inch loaf pans, or a 10-cup Bundt pan, or a muffin pan with floured cooking spray or grease and flour the pan(s); set aside.
- Peel the sweet potatoes and chop them into 1-inch sized chunks. Place chunks in a large, shallow microwave-safe bowl. Add 3 tablespoons water, cover with plastic wrap, and cook on high power for 15 to 17 minutes, or until potatoes are very fork-tender. Pour off any water. Mash sweet potatoes with a fork. Allow them to cool momentarily so you don’t scramble the eggs.
- To the sweet potatoes, add the eggs, oil, buttermilk, vanilla and whisk until combined; set aside. (I used buttermilk powder and added 1 tablespoon powder to the dry ingredients and 1/4 cup water to this wet mixture)
- In a large mixing bowl, combine the dry ingredients – flour, sugars, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, optional salt, and whisk to combine.
- Pour the wet sweet potato mixture over the dry ingredients, and stir to incorporate. Take your time stirring until no stray bits of dry ingredients are visible, folding and scraping the bottom of the bowl with a spatula as necessary because it’s very easy to miss dry ingredients hiding at the bottom of the bowl in this batter. Stir and fold with a gentle hand as to not over-mix and over-develop the gluten, which results in tougher bread.
- Turn batter out into prepared pan(s), smoothing the top lightly with a spatula. Bake for 60 to 70 minutes for a 9×5 pan, or until top is domed, golden, loaf is springy to the touch, and cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Tent pan with foil in the last 15 minutes of cooking if top is browning a bit fast before interior has cooked through.
- Allow bread to cool in pan for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely.
Notes
- I estimate that 8×4 loaves will take about 40 to 45 minutes, a Bundt about 1 hour, muffins about 18-20 minutes, but I haven’t tried those versions and they are just guesstimates.
- Bread will keep at room temperature for up to 1 week. I store my bread by wrapping the completely cooled loaf in plasticwrap, and then placing loaf inside a gallon-sized Ziplock.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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More Fall Bread Recipes:
ALL OF MY QUICK BREAD RECIPES!
Applesauce Bread with Cinnamon Honey Butter – This applesauce bread is packed with fall flavors and comes together quickly. I serve mine with homemade honey butter, because why not?
Apple Carrot Bread— This apple carrot bread tastes like carrot cake that’s been infused with apples. It’s a no mixer recipe that goes from bowl to oven in minutes!
Pumpkin Banana Bread with Browned Butter Cream Cheese Frosting – This quick bread pairs two of my favorites, pumpkin bread and banana bread, with plenty of cinnamon-and-spice and scrumptious frosting to boot
Pumpkin Cream Cheese Bread — This is without a doubt the BEST pumpkin bread recipe! This pumpkin cream cheese bread tastes like it has cheesecake baked into the middle. You’ll definitely want a second slice!
Applesauce Bread with Cinnamon Honey Butter— This applesauce bread is packed with fall flavors and comes together quickly. I serve mine with homemade honey butter, because why not?
Cranberry Orange Bread— The fresh cranberries in this cranberry orange bread contrast nicely with the sweet orange glaze, making it the perfect blend of sweet and tart!
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread— This pumpkin chocolate chip bread is truly the best homemade pumpkin bread you’ll ever make. It’s moist, packed with chocolate chips, and tastes like fall!
Apple Fritter Bread — The bread tastes as decadent as the apple fritters of my childhood, no deep frying required and it’s more like cake disguised as bread.
Originally posted April 3, 2013 and reposted September 18, 2020 with updated text.
I recently had an odd desire to try to make a breakfast muffin with sweet potatoes!! I added shredded zucchini and crushed pineapple with some whole wheat flour. I was very happy with the results!!
It sort of sounds like a carrot cake (some ppl add pineapple) but with sweet potatoes rather than carrots and some zuke thrown in. Sounds excellent! I have a banana bread recipe that reminds me of what you’re talking about!
https://www.averiecooks.com/carrot-pineapple-banana-bread-with-browned-butter-cream-cheese-frosting/
Hi! This is probably a dumb question, but if the sweet potato tastes bland/bad, will the bread also taste bad? I tasted the sweet potato mash (without anything added) and I think I picked a pretty bad tasting (not sweet, kinda weird tasting) sweet potato haha..should I still use it, or should I throw it out? :( or could I add enough sugar to make up for its lack of sweetness ? Thank you!
Just make the batter as written and taste it and it should be plenty spiced – with 1 tbsp of cinnamon and everything else, I think you will be fine but if it still tastes bland, season more before baking. But most sweet potatoes are pretty….bland. I mean they’re a potato so to be expected. I wouldn’t worry.
Hi! I did go and finish making it! IT TASTED SOO YUMMY !! I actually made it in two steps because I realized I had homework to finish, so I just made the wet mixture and froze it for a week…but then I still used it :) it stayed super moist for days (maybe even a week? I kept the loaf at my friend’s apartment, as I live in a dorm with a broken oven and also because I would’ve eaten it all in one day..seriously.) My friends loved it too, though they did say it tasted more just cinnamony than sweet potato-y haha..I think I will try this with purple yams next time or better quality sweet potatoes :) Thank you sooo much!! Going to be making this a lot–Thank you so much :)
Yes lots of nice cinnamon flavor (better than potato-ey flavor, right! haha!) Glad you loved it and given your dorm/apt/oven situation, it still worked out – that’s great!
I posted about this amazing bread on my blog. Check it out! It brought back awesome memories. :)
https://thesweetmash.com/blog/2013/9/24/fall-means-sweet-potato-bread
Just made this yesterday for a potluck and everyone loved it! Really wonderful flavor and depth. Thanks for the great recipe… and also for mentioning buttermilk powder. I actually had no idea that existed, and am very excited about this discovery. I constantly avoid recipes with buttermilk because I always feel wasteful when I buy it- powder to the rescue!
And in most places where a recipe calls for buttermilk you can use about half the amt of yogurt, and top off with regular milk. i.e. 1/2 cup of buttermilk I’d use a generous 1/4 cup yogurt and add milk to get to 1/2 cup.Not a perfect science but generally it’ll work; another way to save on buying buttermilk if you don’t have it. Or use that trick with sour cream, too.
Glad that the powdered b.m. and the bread are hits for you!
I so wish you’d go back to vegan cooking. Yes, I know you’ve done a few recently, but I”m veganizing this recipe. I really used to like following you when it was all vegan, and it’s too bad you felt you needed or wanted to change back to using animal products again.
Life moves on, people change; not everyone is vegan, not everyone is vegan for a lifetime. Life ebbs and flows and it’s not the end of the world to me to use a stick of butter or an egg in a recipe. It’s not like I sit down to a dinner of prime rib; I bake with eggs and butter.
And yes, I provide a mix of vegan and non-vegan recipes. I am not a vegan blog, not a healthy living blog; I make desserty things and breads/breakfasty things. There are plenty of those other kinds of blogs out there. I hope you find what you’re looking for on one of them.
I wish more people told me in 2009 how much they loved my vegan recipes at the time. It seems I get more comments in 2013 about the recipes I used to make way back when. Funny when I was making them at the time, I got very little positive feedback and my readership was 1/100th of what it is today.
The plant based world is really building a strong momentum…it doesn’t have to be “vegan” per se, but you were at one time, which is why I followed you I think by RSS at the time, I guess just keep adding those recipes back in. You apparently still care, or you wouldn’t feature them at all, and the reason you get more comments now, is because you are catering the SAD eaters who are addicted to sugar, oil, and salt, and people gravitate to that.
I still love your photography, yes, I’ll still pop in from time to time, just know I am one of your past afficionados of your vegan cooking/baking, although with nearly no fat now.
Would love to try this, because it looks amazing!!! Any ideas for substituting the AP flour with possibly almond flour or coconut flour? 1:1 ratio? What about maple syrup or honey substitutions for both of the sugars??
First, I love love love this bread, as written. Normally I am one for substitutions and modifications, but in this bread, I strongly advise to just make it as written. You will love it.
If you are trying to avoid AP flour on account of gluten, use a GF baking blend. Coconut flour is highly absorbant, almond/nut flours are not. Neither of them will sub at a 1:1 ratio.
You cannot substitute a liquid sweetener (honey or maple) for a dry sugar without changing the flour ratios.
If you want to play around with it and tweak, go for it – all of cooking is one big experiment. But you’re the scientist, not me – so your tweaks are yours and you’d have to play around til the recipe works. As written, it works beautifully. :)
Made this weekend! So so moist and spicy. I recommend leaving this in for longer than the suggested baking time- I baked for maybe 75 minutes, and it wouldn’t have hurt to leave it in longer since it retains it’s moisture so well. It just puffed up so much and the center was very thick so it takes awhile to cook through. Mine turned out incredible and was enjoyed by all!
Thanks for trying this and yes, due to the moisture content in sweet potatoes, how they were cooked/steamed, as well as possibly summertime humidity and moisture in the air, this loaf does take awhile to cook from all the moisture & could vary quite a bit from person to person. Glad to hear yours turned out incredible and it was enjoyed by all! Thanks for LMK!
Did you ever make the Choc Chip Cookies/Bars? I have a 5/23 comment from you I’m looking at also, and wondering if you tried them or what you did on those?
I never did make them into bars, but I will let you know if I do. Thanks for your response and great suggestions!
Oh my this bread sounds amazing but I only have can sweet potatoes will it work? How much to use?
Ohhhhhhhh man. This sounds absolutely wonderful!!! I’ve tried sweet potatoes in just about everything (I’ve even juiced them!) but haven’t tried them in a tasty bread loaf like this one. It makes such a stunning and vibrant bread, I need to try this very very soon! Thank you for sharing :)
Thanks for stopping by, Eva! I’ve admired your work for ages and you’re so inspiring! Congrats on being a Saveur nominee as well! Anyway, yes, this bread is so moist, dense, soft, full of flavor…if you like sweet potatoes (or pumpkin recipes), this is your bread. And it’s easy!