Carrots and sweet potatoes, tossed with olive oil, salt and red pepper flakes and oven roasted.

Roasted Carrots and Sweet Potatoes

I love roasted vegetables, and this is the time of year - when you don't mind turning on your oven - to get your fill of them!

Roasting really brings out the natural sweetness and enhances the overall flavor of vegetables and you just can't beat the ease of preparation.

Sweet potatoes, baked, split, mashed and combined with butter, spices and milk, stuffed back into the shell and rebaked. A delicious side dish anytime, but great for a holiday meal.

Twice-Baked Sweet Potatoes

I love twice-baked potatoes! Just the expanded flavor from the additions and fluffy texture of the potato after you baked it, mash it, mix it with all the goodies and then bake it, again... outstanding! 

Bet you didn't even think of sweet potatoes. Yep, they're good twice baked too!

A sweet potato salad, made with roasted sweet potatoes and marinated in an olive oil, apple cider and honey vinaigrette dressing.

Roasted Sweet Potato Salad

So, I ran across this book called The Sweet Magnolias Cookbook written by New York Times bestselling author Sherryl Woods, from one of those suggested previews on Amazon... which, of course, sent me down a huge rabbit hole.

I soon found out that it was a cookbook based on a book series, of which a Netflix original video series was also created, so of course, you know what was next, right?

A shortcut sweet potato casserole with the unusual addition of banana and finished with rows of marshmallows and brown sugar sweetened cornflake cereal crumbs.

Sweet Potato Banana Crunch

I am all for being about tradition when it comes to holiday meals. Keep the dishes that you know and love on the menu, because everyone will be expecting them, every, single year!

My Mama's holiday table was the same every year, with very little variation between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I miss those times so much, and while we now share our holidays with my son, our daughter-in-law and grandkids, I still find myself missing my Mama tremendously this time of year.

Seasoned mashed fresh sweet potatoes, stuffed inside crescent dough bundles, sprinkled with cinnamon sugar and baked in a flavored sugar syrup.

Sweet Potato Dumplings

I may have mentioned before that I love sweet potatoes. They're an easy side and so many ways to enjoy them. Plain baked or twice baked, as chips or fries, roasted, grilled, mashed, in a skillet hash, tossed in a buttery glaze or candied in a simple syrup, added to soups, in a casserole, in fried pies or a classic sweet potato pie, in biscuits, or added to quick bread, I'll take them all.

When I bake them, you can be sure I'll bake off a few extra, since they keep several days in the fridge and are super easy to reheat in the microwave. Well, that is when you have a microwave.

Broiled Sweet Potatoes - Baked then brushed with a cinnamon honey butter and a drizzle of cane syrup before being passed under the broiler.

Broiled Sweet Potatoes

I love sweet potatoes, just about any way that you can prepare them. Just plain baked will do me fine, or even better, twice-baked.

Roasted, glazed with buttery bourbon, candied with a simple syrup, grilled, baked in a casserole, in a quick bread, and, of course, in a pie. Just pass them over however they're prepared. Even The Cajun will eat them and thankfully, they are available year-round. I hope that you'll give this version a try too.

Southern Candied Yams (Sweet Potatoes)

Sweet potatoes baked in a spiced, sugar syrup.

Candied Yams

We eat a lot of sweet potatoes here in the Deep South, and especially in Mississippi and Louisiana, because they are state crops for us, fresh and in abundance, especially in the fall and winter months.

Sweet potato biscuits made with mashed, seasoned sweet potato and spices.

Sweet Potato Biscuits

I'm a lover of sweet potatoes in pretty much any form you can make them - baked, fried, glazed, roasted, grilled, mashed, cut up into soups, in casseroles, in a pie or quick bread, and yes, even in a classic biscuit!

Sausage and Sweet Potato Soup with Black-eyed Peas

A beef broth and tomato based soup made with smoked sausage, sweet potatoes, blackeye peas and cabbage.

Sausage and Sweet Potato Soup with Blackeye Peas

This fantastic soup was inspired by a recipe I saw while flipping through an old cookbook of mine, Is It Soup Yet? - A Cookbook for Soup Lovers. Actually it's a 1998 cookbook and not really all that old, but I guess in terms of a cookbook, it's practically vintage these days.

When I saw the combination of sweet potatoes with sausage in a soup, I have to say I was intrigued. Y'all already know I am pretty much a soup kinda gal anyway, but I have to say I absolutely adored this one. It will definitely be one for the regular rotation of favorite soups in my kitchen. The smoked sausage, sweet potato and black-eyed peas really are a fantastic combination of complimentary flavors I think you'll love.

Little fried hand pies made with fresh fruit or dried, your choice of pastry and either pan fried, deep fried or baked. No matter how you prepare them, they are a true Southern Classic!

Southern Fried Hand Pies

A reader over on the Facebook page asked about these little southern delicacies and we started chatting about everybody's favorites, and of course, impressionable me, decided I had to make some right away! I get cravings thrown on me like that all the time.

Fresh sweet potatoes baked in a cane syrup and brown sugar, bourbon glaze.

Bourbon Glazed Sweet Potatoes

Here in The Deep South, we absolutely love our sweet potatoes. And we love our cane syrup. Oh yeah, and our bourbon. You'll find it expressed in an awful lot of recipes, especially around the holidays, so it's no surprise that we love our sweet potatoes glazed with a syrupy bourbon too. For us down along this way, that's most often made using Steen's pure cane syrup, a well loved and local favorite from Louisiana.

A tender quick bread made with sweet potatoes, raisins, orange juice, cinnamon and pecans, with an oatmeal crumble topping. Serve with my whipped honey butter with cinnamon.

Southern Sweet Potato Bread

So, the calendar says that we've reached the Autumnal Equinox, meaning summer is now officially over and that it's finally fall.

Somebody needs to tell Mama Nature to hurry on up and turn on the air conditioning down in this part of the good ole U.S. of A. because the heat is definitely still on.

That's typical though, while a lot of y'all are enjoying nice, crisp seasonal changes, we're still in beach weather for awhile. We're pretty accustomed to it being this way, but at least it's a good excuse to start featuring a few fall dishes.

Ways to Cook Sweet Potatoes ... Baked and More!

Some of my favorite ways to cook sweet potatoes ... baked, twice-backed, microwave, french fried, roasted, grilled, skillet hash, mashed and pureed.

Ways to Cook Sweet Potatoes

I realize that folks all over the U.S. eat sweet potatoes, and I also realize that they are grown in a lot of states {and even overseas}, but sweet potatoes sure speak southern to me.

Did you know that over 235 million pounds of them are produced annually right here in our fine state of Mississippi? Vardaman, Mississippi, located in the northern part of our state, is only one of the top five Mississippi sweet potato producers.

Every year in the first week of November they host a National Sweet Potato Festival, and Vardaman, in fact, lays claim to the title of "The Sweet Potato Capitol of the World." In truth, North Carolina is the biggest producer in the U.S., followed by close competitors Louisiana, California and Mississippi. Even still, China is the largest producer of sweet potatoes - about 80% of the world's supply.

 

  A classic southern pie made with spiced fresh sweet potatoes, topped with toasted pecans and drizzled with syrup.

Southern Sweet Potato Pie

Southern Sweet Potato Pie was one of three pies that nearly always graced our holiday tables growing up - along with pecan, and pumpkin - though I seem to recall that me and Mama were the only two who truly indulged in the sweet potato pie.

Somewhat likened to pumpkin pie, and certainly seasoned similarly, they really are different from one another, and if you put the two side by side, I'd be able to identify which is which, as easy as I can tell if it's homemade or made from a canned sweet potato pie filling.

Not that there's a thing wrong with whipping up a pie using canned pie filling, but like homemade pimento cheese versus a commercial pimento cheese product, you can usually spot homemade.

Traditional Southern Sweet Potato Casserole

Classic old-fashioned souffled sweet potato casserole topped with gooey marshmallows, pecan praline topping - or both!

Sweet Potato Casserole

I don't know what it is about sweet potatoes fluffed up souffle like and topped with gooey marshmallows, but we sure love this dish down here in The Deep South and it is a rare Southern table that is not graced with it on Thanksgiving or Christmas, or both.

A wonderful side dish combining seasonal butternut squash with sweet potato and a praline topping, perfect for the holidays.

Praline Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato Casserole

Try adding this combination of sweet potatoes with butternut squash to your holiday menu.

We have a pretty short window of availability for any kind of winter squash in the south, and butternut barely gets a passing glance in the grocery stores here. Given that, it isn't a squash that I have experimented with much.

One thing I did find, however, was that I was not too wild about it at all in any kind of soup form, which seems one of the most common ways it is presented.