This recipe for twice baked sweet potatoes is tender potatoes piled high with pecan brown sugar streusel, marshmallows and dried cranberries. You can prepare them in advance and then pop them in the oven right before your holiday meal!
These sweet potatoes have all the great flavors of a traditional casserole, yet they’re elegant enough for a fancy dinner.
There are so many different mashed sweet potato recipes out there – some are topped with marshmallows, some with pecans and some with streusel. I can never decide which version I like the best so I decided to combine them all and stuff them into a hand held form. Behold, twice baked sweet potatoes loaded with toppings!
How do you make twice baked sweet potatoes?
For these twice baked sweet potatoes you’ll start with a pile of sweet potatoes – try to pick potatoes that are the same size and shape, they’ll cook more evenly and the end result will look nicer if all your potato shells look similar. My daughter had a great time sorting through the sweet potato bin at the grocery store looking for the right ones. After the potatoes are roasted the flesh is scooped out and mashed with a little butter and brown sugar. I use a potato ricer for the smoothest end result but you can also use a standard potato masher or a mixer.
After the mashed potatoes get stuffed back into their shells you can either put them in the fridge and store them for later or proceed by adding the toppings. I topped the potatoes with a brown sugar pecan streusel, mini marshmallows and dried cranberries.
This is such a fun way to serve sweet potatoes on Thanksgiving and it’s so convenient to make them ahead of time. You can easily double or triple this recipe for a crowd – the important thing is to not skimp on the toppings. Because come on, we all know that’s the best part!
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More great Thanksgiving recipes
- Southern Cornbread Dressing
- Sweet Potato Casserole
- Slow Cooker Mac and Cheese
- Green Bean Bundles
- Cranberry Jello Salad
Loaded Twice Baked Sweet Potatoes
Ingredients
- For the mashed potatoes:
- 8 medium sweet potatoes similar size and shape
- 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter
- 2 tablespoons of brown sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- For the streusel:
- 2 tablespoons of flour
- 2 tablespoons of brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons of finely chopped pecans
- 2 tablespoons of cold butter cut into small cubes
- 1/2 cup mini marshmallows
- 1/4 cup dried cranberries roughly chopped
- cooking spray
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a sheet pan with foil and coat with cooking spray. Place the potatoes on the pan and prick each one a few times with a fork.
- Place in the oven and bake for 45-50 minutes, or until tender.
- When the potatoes are cool enough to handle gently slice the tops off and scoop out the insides, leaving a 1/4 inch thick border.
- Combine the potatoes with 2 tablespoons of butter, 2 tablespoons of brown sugar, cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon of salt (or more to taste). Mash the potatoes with a mixer, potato masher or ricer.
- Spoon the potato mixture back into only 6 of the shells; discard the remaining 2 shells. Alternatively you can use a piping bag fitted with a large star tip to pipe the potatoes into the shells in a decorative fashion.
- At this point you can store the potatoes in the fridge for up to one day or proceed to baking.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- In a bowl combine the flour and brown sugar. Using a fork, cut the cold butter into the flour mixture until coarse crumbs form. Stir in the pecans.
- Sprinkle the streusel mixture over the potatoes and lightly pat it down with your fingers so it sticks.
- Place the potatoes in the oven and bake for 20 minutes. If the potatoes are coming from the fridge you'll need to add 15 minutes to the bake time.
- Remove the potatoes from the oven and gently press the marshmallows into the tops. Bake for another 3 minutes or until marshmallows have melted.
- Remove the potatoes from the oven and sprinkle the dried cranberries over the top. Serve immediately.
Have grandkids coming to the farm, right now sweet potatoes are plentiful. These kids don’t have a very large pallet of food that they eat! I am going to get all the condiments and see if that helps! Thanks for that recipe!
I would like to convert this to gluten free, what type of gf flour would you suggest? Simply an all purpose GF blend? This looks so good!
I think you could use an all purpose GF flour and it would be fine!
These taters are gorgeous and so inviting. I LOVE how you dressed them up!
Looks amazing.
What beautiful little stuffed boats of potatoes and scrumptious stuff. I’m with you on liking my potatoes stuffed with everything good:)
I love the idea of twice baked potatoes but twice bakes SWEET potatoes with marshmallows! Thanks YOU!
Just in time for fall, love sweet potatoes, perfect!
I love that these are like individual sweet potato casserole in a sweet potato itself.
That’s perfect! A sweet potato casserole all for one!! Love!
This is such a great idea instead of the traditional sweet potatoes casserole =)