Choco & Cinnamon Palm Sugar Sweet Potato Balls

We get inspired by everything. Famous chefs, popular cookbooks, recipe sites, top food bloggers, markets, restaurants, our mom/grandma/auntie/cousin/neighbor/pets, the city, the sky, the ocean, you name it.

My recent inspiration came from one of my favorite manga series, Delicious! (デリシャス!) by Yui Ayumi (あゆみゆい)

Yeah, baby! I am a big kid at heart ^_^ and until today, I still love reading my battered and dangerously falling apart manga comics right before I sleep. This series is about a girl who was clueless about cooking (kinda like the old me), and had to learn how to cook as she turned into a cooking show host (kinda like me (had to learn how to cook), but for different reasons (the last time I checked, I am pretty certain that I didn't host any cooking shows, apart from the private ones I did for sous chef - details censored - lol!). At the end of each book, there's a collection of recipes, and I found one I always wanted to try since I was twent...(Oh, let's just say since I was a lot younger hehe :p)

Choco & Cinnamon Palm Sugar Sweet Potato Balls
Here's the original recipe (in Bahasa Indonesia):

and here's what I did:
- 2 cups mashed sweet potatoes (peel potatoes, cut small, boil until soft, mash)
- 4 tbsp caster sugar
- 2 tbsp butter
- 3 tbsp cream
- for filling/topping: ground cinnamon, palm sugar (chopped into small pieces), semi sweet chocolate chunks, chocolate rice

Mix the mashed sweet potatoes with butter, sugar and cream, make into small balls, flatten and place your filling, close and roll into balls. Sprinkle with cinnamon or chocolate rice...mix and match...and you can do a lot more!

The recipe didn't require baking. I tried baking some, but nothing happened apart from softening the chocolate chip and liquifying the sugar stuffing. So, next time, I'll just stick with the no bake recipe ;)

Loving the extremely different feel of both palm sugar - cinnamon and the chocolate ones. When I eat something, I want to know what's inside, so I presented both versions differently. You could follow the original recipe's recommendation and surprise others with whatever they were going to get inside the sweet potato balls...marshmallows, peanuts, hazelnuts, or even bacon! Hehe ;)

Hmmm, watching some hot swimmers in action at the Olympic made me think of greasy fries (I am sure that's just me and my twisted imagination ^_^). How about you?