Sweet Potato Soup

I cooked this sweet potato soup today because I had a craving for it (no, I'm not pregnant: non-preggies can have cravings too! :) ) and it's such a cold and rainy day today that I decided that it was a perfect day for this hot dessert. Besides, I re-introduced the yellow sweet potato to Alicia yesterday and she's in love with it again... so I thought she could have some of this dessert too!

Just an aside, Alicia had some cold dessert for the first time yesterday - a mango-based cold dessert (we met up with my hubby's colleagues (my ex-colleagues) last night). She usually detests cold food but for the sake of the dessert, she actually tried to overcome that barrier. :D Anyway, she had quite a few sips of it and then decided that she had had enough.

Alicia's response to this sweet potato soup? Extremely keen and happy! She kept saying "more! more!" while pointing at the bowl of dessert even though her mouth was already stuffed full with sweet potato. lol... Well, she still doesn't like the orange sweet potato so we gave her only the yellow ones. After awhile, she wanted to self-feed this dessert: it was a mess!!! She tried to spoon out whole spoonfuls of the soup to drink and that of course meant that she dripped the soup all over... well... time to bathe her anyway... :) and not forgetting to brush her teeth!

You can read more about the goodness of sweet potatoes for babies here.

Sweet potato soup

Ingredients:

• 1/2 huge orange sweet potato
• 2 yellow sweet potatoes
• 1 handful dried longans
• 4 slices of ginger
• yellow rock sugar to taste
• 1L water

Method:

1. Skin the sweet potatoes and cut into bite-size pieces.
2. Rinse the dried longans.
3. Bring the water to a boil in a pot.
4. Add all the ingredients (except the rock sugar) and simmer for 12-15min (till the dried longans have puffed up and the sweet potatoes are soft).
5. Add rock sugar to taste.

*Do not add too much ginger as it causes the soup to be 'spicy' - unless you like it that way :) Since I was intending to give it to Alicia, the soup has definitely gotta be not spicy!

For toddler's consumption:

• Cut sweet potato into small cubes.
• Avoid over-use of ginger.