The Comforting Sweet Potato Upgrade Your Lattes Need This Fall

If you're in the mood for a latte that features fall vegetables but have had enough pumpkin spice, consider a sweet potato latte. The goguma latte (named after the Korean word for sweet potato) is a popular fall and winter drink in Korea. Despite the name, there's usually no coffee in it,  but you can use it as inspiration to upgrade your own coffee-based latte.

To make it, you can pull a shot or two of espresso as normal, and all you need beyond that is sweet potato milk. This is basically sweet potato blended with milk (either cow's milk or dairy alternatives), and sweetened with honey or sugar if you like. The sweet potato makes for a thicker drink, and some say that the flavor can seem a bit more like chestnut or caramel rather than straight-up sweet potato.

Your main difficulty will likely be getting your hands on the right sweet potato; the other ingredients should be pantry staples. The Korean sweet potato that's ideal for the drink has a purple-red skin and a pale yellow interior, so it's fairly far removed from the standard deep-orange sweet potatoes in American supermarkets. You'll likely have more luck at a specialty supermarket for Korean products such as H-Mart. Japanese sweet potatoes can also work, otherwise a purple Okinawan sweet potato is a decent substitute if you can't find the Korean one. This will also give your drink a violet tinge. (Despite their colors, neither of these sweet potatoes should be confused with ube, the purple yam popular in Filipino food, which also appears in lattes.) 

Once you've got the right sweet potato, its pretty simple: You can roast or steam it; recipes vary between these two methods. You'll want to peel the sweet potato once it's cooked for a nice and smooth latte. Then, throw it in a blender with some milk.  Although the goguma latte is a hot drink, there's no reason this shouldn't work for an iced latte: Just blend the sweet potato with cold milk (you'll probably want to let it cool a bit). 

Otherwise, heat some milk up and blend it with the sweet potato. (Be careful when doing so, as hot liquids can cause blender lids to fly off.) Pour this into your coffee cup with fresh espresso in it. For the full latte experience, you may want to prepare some extra frothed milk on the side to top it off. The goguma latte is sometimes served with a sprinkle of cinnamon, so that's one further option for extra flavor. 

This isn't the only Korean cafe drink that's crossing over to North America. Black sesame lattes and the einspanner (a coffee topped with whipped cream, originally from Vienna but now popular in Korea) are arguably in the same cohort.