Sweet Potato Cookie Bars

Sweet Potato Cookie Bars
1 c. unsalted butter, softened
2 c. dark brown sugar, packed
3 c. all-purpose flour
4 large eggs
1 1/2 c. sweet potato puree (I used fresh sweet potatoes and began with 2 large ones. You can easily substitute canned sweet potato puree. If you do opt for fresh, please see below for instructions on preparing your sweet potatoes.)
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. ancho chile, ground
1 tsp. canela, ground (ground cinnamon may be substituted)
1- 10.5 oz. bag of mini marshmallows
cooking spray
Preheat oven to 350°.
Grease 2- 8″x8″ baking pans and set aside.
To prepare the sweet potato puree, peel the potatoes and cut each into 6-8 smaller pieces (chopping the potatoes reduces your cooking time significantly). Place potato pieces in a large pot of boiling water (you’ll need at least enough water to cover the pieces) and boil for approximately 20 minutes or until fork tender. Remove cooked potato pieces from heat, drain, and set aside to cool slightly.
Meanwhile, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and continue mixing as you add the cinnamon, salt, ancho, and finally the flour. Mix just until a uniform batter forms.
As soon as the sweet potato pieces are cool enough to handle, mash with a fork and fold the puree into the batter. Pour the batter into your prepared pans and bake for 28-30 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the center of the cookie bars comes out clean. Remove the baked bars and top with the marshmallows.
Turn on your oven’s broiler to its highest setting – creating the toasted marshmallow topping for this dessert is simple to do, it just requires some attention so that your bars don’t burn. Once your broiler is on, put your marshmallow-topped bars on a rack under the broiler but at the bottom of the oven so that there is at least a foot of space between the bars and the broiler flame. Keep the oven door cracked so that you can watch the marshmallows toast and, if your oven is anything like mine, you will likely need to carefully rotate the pans as the marshmallows toast so that they toast evenly. My oven has a few ‘hot spots’ and if I don’t dishes that I’m broiling, one small area will scorch. You want the marshmallows to be a dark golden brown on top – as soon as they’re the color you like, remove the pans to cool.
If you opt to cut circle bars like I did, you can carefully remove the bars to the freezer for 5 minutes so that they’ll cool quickly and harden slightly. I used a 2″ fluted metal cookie cutter that I ran under a little warm water before I started cutting. Once your bars have cooled slightly, simply press down firmly with your cutter until you reach the bottom of the pan. Rotate the cutter slightly and pull it straight out – it should come out holding the bar that you’ve just cut out. Push the bar out onto your serving piece and cut another. You’ll likely want to wash your cutter after every 3 bars or so, just so that you can keep cutting neat bars. Of course, the scraps between the circles are for the chef.
YIELD: approximately 12-14 circle cookie bars or 18 square cookie bars