2 Simple and Tasty Recipes Made with Sweet Potatoes from our Cuenca Cocina!

We lived in the south for years and learned how to make numerous dishes using the wonderful tasting sweet potato. Here's a couple of those recipes straight from our Cuenca Ecuador cocina. 

Baked Sweet Potato Wedges

Baked sweet potato wedges are tasty, nutritious and sure to please the palette; they make a great side dish or a snack. Bake them until they start to caramelize a bit in the oven; that's when they are the best. Yum-Yum. I have to make more than one pan around here!

Ingredients
3 to 6 Sweet potatoes (depending on how many people)
sea salt
EV olive oil

Preparation
Cut up sweet potatoes any way you like. Place the potatoes on a generously oiled cookie sheet, or in a oiled cast iron skillet; sprinkle sea salt and then a bunch of olive oil, then work it with your hands making sure that every potato is coated well with oil and salt. Bake in the oven on 350 degrees for 45 minutes to 1 hour.  In the middle of cooking, stir the potatoes once. That's it! Enjoy!

Sweet Potato Pie 

If we have a choice to eat sweet potato pie or pumpkin, we always choose sweet potato, hands down, in our opinion it is better than pumpkin! But that's just us, our sons grew up on sweet potatoes and we love them in this house!  I juice them and they are more nutritious than carrots and have more beta carotene than carrots.

Ingredients for one large pie

3 to 4 large sweet potatoes or 5 medium
1 cup whole ground sugar cane (azucar integral de cana)
1/2 cup (real) butter
1 package cream cheese (softened)
3 eggs
1 tablespoon Vanilla

1 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 cup milk (may use almond, soy, nut, or oat milk in place of cow's milk)
optional dash or two of nutmeg
optional dash or two of cinnamon (we like it without cinnamon)

 pie crust is half whole wheat flour

Preparation

Boil sweet potatoes with the skins on, after about a half hour or so of boiling, stick a fork in them and see if they are soft. If they are done, drain and peel. In large mixing bowl, add the potatoes, sugar, butter and sea salt and blend well, getting out any lumps. I pull my cream cheese from the fridge about an hour or two before making the pie so it will not be hard to work with; blend in the eggs, milk, vanilla, and nutmeg if using. Fill your pie shell and bake for 1 hour in a 350 degree oven. Absolutely scrumptious! 

Note: For our Cuenca readers, we have found the sweet potatoes once at Coral in the Mall Del Rio, and there is a lady who sells them at Feria Libre as well. The purple sweet potatoes they sell here are not that good, do not use, just a gentle warning.  ;-)

We're an Expat Family of Five Living Frugal, Healthy and Happy in Cuenca Ecuador! Enjoy the Discover Cuenca Ecuador blog!