Bacon Wrapped Sweet Potatoes

To kick off the new blog, I'll start with a recipe that's super duper easy...and so incredibly good.

Here's what you'll need:

2 medium-small sweet potatoes
1 lb uncured bacon
2 Tbsp butter (I used Trader Joe's unsalted Kerry Gold)
1/2 tsp ancho chili powder
1 Tbsp sea salt
4 Tbsp maple syrup — OPTIONAL

Preheat oven to 350F. Peel the sweet potatoes and cut them lengthwise into quarters. Then cut each quarter in half, and then half again. You’ll wind up with 32 bites.

Melt butter over low-heat and stir in chipotle chili powder and sea salt. Toss the potatoes in the spiced, melted butter to coat.

Cut the bacon slices in half, so you have 32 mini-slices of bacon. Wrap each sweet potato bite with a half slice of bacon, and use a toothpick to hold the bacon in place. The toothpick doesn't have to go very far into the sweet potato, just far enough to hold the bacon in place.

Place on a stainless steel baking sheet and bake for 45 minutes, turning once about halfway through. The second time I made these I used my broiler pan & it worked much better! All the grease fell into the pan. This made the bacon crispier and made saving the bacon grease very easy.

These are done when the bacon is crispy and the sweet potatoes are fork-tender. You could also drizzle these with a bit of maple syrup when finished, but I choose not to.