I recently made sweet potato-chocolate chip cookies, and now my confidence is higher than student debt in America.

A few things before I drop this recipe, beginning with the fact that I know we’re in between spooky and Thanksgiving season and that everything is supposed to be about “pumpkin this” and “pumpkin that.” I get it. Please calm down. I am not here to rob pumpkins of their moment. Also, I am not one of those Black people who religiously reject pumpkin-infused items, like pumpkin spice lattes, pumpkin ice cream or pumpkin tarts (well, maybe pumpkin tarts because that sounds ridiculous).

But in all seriousness, I do love pumpkin. I once almost lost my Black card over defending pumpkin pie during the Thanksgiving holiday.

Despite the fact that Thanksgiving is literally a genocide-fest, many of us have learned to reclaim the holiday as the day of family, food, and our love for food, which means violence should not be on the menu.

So, I rolled up to a holiday function with some pumpkin pies. It was a year after my good friend, an artist whom I call White Boy Sam, introduced me to the foreign pie. I was amazed at how well the relatively healthy pumpkin pie — which isn’t as sweet as some of the traditional pies served at my family’s Thanksgiving — paired with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. I tried to give this experience to my family, and these wild people did everything they could to not treat me like a child of God.

They called me everything under the sun and, if I’m not mistaken, someone may have whipped a gun out.

But after going through all that, I still have a love for pumpkin pie and pumpkins; I just don’t happen to use them in this recipe, instead opting for sweet potato. Though for the real pumpkin fans out there, no fear: You can swap pumpkin in for the sweet potatoes, or even get really creative and mix the two together. I’ve never tried that, but I imagine it works well.

I am not a trained chef, which means everything I make is doable and accessible to everyone, maybe even children. Whenever I have the urge to bake, which is a weekly thing now, I scour the Internet for the simplest ingredients, and then I modify them, cut corners and even try to make them simpler before sharing them with you. The fewer ingredients, the better. For my delicious sweet potato-chocolate chip cookie recipe, I finally got it right with this mix.

Ingredients

Directions

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