Sarah's Kitchen: Twice baked sweet potato

I don't think I even ate a sweet potato until I was an adult. Ours was a plain potato kind of household growing up. But now I love a good bit of roasted kumera.

I was reading blogs a few weeks ago and stumbled across this recipe for "Slice-Baked Potatoes" on The Pioneer Woman's blog.

As it was Sunday night, I was bored and had a hulking great huge sweet potato sitting on my bench, I thought I'd adapt it a bit. So in between watching some British murder mystery, I did the following.

First, I laid out all my ingredients and took a photo, as food bloggers are supposed to do.

Then, I skipped the bit with the bacon, not having any. I sliced the sweet potato into chunks about 2cm wide, then baked in a hot oven. 190 degrees for about half an hour. Then I scooped out the soft insides with an ice-cream scoop. I decided I didn't want to make holes all the way through, but as you can see, not everything went as planned.

I mixed the sweet potato innards in a bowl with the cheese, sour cream, salt and pepper. I added only a tiny bit of milk in the end because I didn't want it too soggy. I didn't use an electric mixer for this, just a potato masher! Then I spooned the combined mixture into my little sweet potato rounds.

 And added some more cheese...

 Then baked the whole lot again for about 10 mins. This is how they turned out.

They got the thumbs up from hubby, and also from me. The only thing I would say is that they are a bit fussy to make, in that you can't make them, whack them in the oven and walk away. I think the whole recipe took me over an hour start to finish!

Ever done this recipe? Any tips on how to cut down on prep time?