oven roasted chicken and sweet potato balls

Or perhaps these should be called oven roasted chicken and sweet potato croquettes?  I am not sure what qualifies as a croquette, but is sounds just a bit better than "balls".

Anywho...I whipped up a batch of these last night.  Not sure where the inspiration came from, but I thought the combination sounded okay and why not give it a try?!  Basically these are made up of mashed sweet potatoes and chopped up chicken.

In the mix:
2 cooked and mashed sweet potatoes
1 large chicken breast - cooked
about 1/4 cup plain Greek yogurt
2-3 tablespoons chopped onions
2 cloves garlic
1/8 cup chopped green pepper
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup Panko
Ground flax seeds (optional)
Ranch seasoning (optional)

Place chicken, onion, garlic, green pepper, salt and pepper in the food processor.  Process until finely ground.  In a bowl, mix the mashed sweet potatoes and Greek yogurt.  Stir in the chicken mixture.  Form mixture into balls.

In a separate bowl mix about 1/2 cup panko with a few tablespoons of ground flax (optional) and a teaspoon of ranch seasoning (optional).

Coat each ball with the panko mixture and place on a baking sheet.  Lightly coat all the balls with cooking spray and cook in 425* oven for about 20 minutes or until nicely browned.

The back three of these have been coated in the panko mixture, the front two have not

We served these with some honey mustard and a side of roasted tomatoes and mushrooms and they were excellent!

Note - if you let the mixture set overnight in the fridge (before being formed into balls) the flavor is much better the next day.  Today I whipped up a few of these for lunch and served them with a big pile of honey mustard roasted carrots and cauliflower.  Y.U.M.