Baked Sweet Potatoes

By Hklbrries

Sweet Potatoes Among the Most Nutritious Vegetables:

Sweet potatoes have been an important part of the diet in the United States for most of our history, especially in the southeast. From the middle of the 20th century, however, they have fallen out of favor, except, of course, for that surge in popularity around the holidays. A sweet potato casserole is pretty well a given for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

It's unfortunate that their popularity has waned because there are few vegetables that have more nutrition than the sweet potato. Besides simple starches, they are rich in complex carbohydrates. At just 86 calories per 3-ounce serving, they're quite acceptable to most diets, including diabetic ones; they're full of fiber, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin B6 and beta carotene.

In 1992, the Center for Science in the Public Interest compared the nutritional value of sweet potatoes to other vegetables. Considering all of the above mentioned criteria, sweet potatoes earned 184 points, 100 points over the next on the list, the common potato.

Most countries grow at least some sweet potatoes. They are still popular here in the American South. Uganda, Rwanda and some other African countries grow large crops, which are an important part of their populations' diets.

Central America and Mexico grow sizeable crops. They were also grown before western exploration in Polynesia and the Cook Islands, spreading across Polynesia to Hawaii and New Zealand from there. They're popular throughout the Caribbean (where they're most often called boniato). The Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, India and some other Asian countries grow a lot of them. Surpris-ingly, North and South America, the original homes of the sweet potato, together grow less than 3 percent of the world's supply.

China, however, grows 80 percent of the world's sweet potato crop, more than half of which is used to feed animals. They export most of the rest, especially to the Japanese who love them in tempura...

Europe has only a very small sweet potato production, mainly in Portugal. I learned a lesson this summer when I broke down and paid the equivalent of $4 for a single sweet potato in France. They were expensive because they were imported from the U.S.

The sweet potato, by the way, isn't a potato at all and is not the same vegetable as the yam, although we tend to confuse them. The true yam is the tuber of a tropical vine and is not even distantly related to the sweet potato. It has a brown or black skin that resembles the bark of a tree and off-white, purple or red flesh, depending on the variety. They grow in tropical climates, primarily in South America, Africa and the Caribbean. Yams contain more natural sugar than sweet potatoes and have a higher moisture content.

... sweet potatoes -- our most undervalued but nutritional vegetable. A few of them would be delicious for Thanksgiving, which will be here before you know it.

Ingredients

• 5 sweet potatoes
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 2 tbsp heavy cream
• 1/4 cup butter, softened
• 3 tbsp all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans

Preparation

Step 1

Preheat oven to 350 F. Lightly grease a 9-by-13-inch baking dish. Bake sweet potatoes 35 minutes or until they begin to soften. Cool slightly, peel and mash.

In a large bowl, mix the mashed sweet potatoes, salt, 1/4 cup butter, eggs, vanilla extract, cinnamon, sugar and heavy cream. Transfer to the prepared baking dish.

In a medium bowl, combine 1/4 cup butter, flour, brown sugar and chopped pecans. Mix with a pastry blender or your fingers to the consistency of course meal. Sprinkle over the sweet potato mixture.

Bake 30 minutes, until topping is crisp and lightly browned.