Baked Sweet Potatoes

I've found my new favorite way to make T's favorite sweet potatoes: baking!  If you remember, I am not a potato girl.  I have no idea how to make them, and have had to stumble around when working with them.  Well, after perusing my cook-book I realized that there were directions for baking the potatoes vs. dicing and steaming on the stove top.  Cutting the potatoes into steam-able portions definitely has hurt my hand in the past, so I was really excited to find an alternative method.  It's so easy.  You take a potato, wash it thoroughly, puncture it with a fork repeatedly all over to allow steam to escape (you don't want exploded potato in your oven, believe me), wrap in foil, then bake at 400F for around 45 minutes.  The recipe said 30-60 minutes, but mine took about 50 minutes.  Also, I didn't wrap one of the potatoes fully because I didn't cut enough foil, and that was a mistake.  That one was difficult to peel. 

Yes, I said peel.  The best part of this is that the skin basically falls off!  I monitored the progress of the potatoes by checking every 15 minutes, peeling back the foil, and poking with my fork until it was very tender.  One the potatoes were baked, I unwrapped them from the foil, cut in half length-wise, and flipped the cut side down on my cutting board.  Then I could get an edge of the skin and practically peel it off in one swipe!  The less baked parts kind of stuck on, but I was able to easily pry those sections off with the tip of my knife (RADA knives are my fave!  Super sharp and beautiful to boot!  Plus they're made in my home town of Waverly, Iowa). 

So, if your kid likes sweet potatoes too, I would recommend this method over the other steamed method I tried in the past.  Good luck!