Sweet Potato Graham Cracker “French Toast” Sticks

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Please do not judge a book by its cover.

Sweet Potato Graham Cracker Sticks

Sometimes the strangest and weirdest looking food tastes the best.

These lumpy, bumpy, crusty potato sticks may not win any beauty pageants, but they are the best potatoes I have ever eaten.

Sweet Potato Graham Cracker Sticks

I don’t really love potatoes, but I loved these.

Sweet Potato Graham Cracker Sticks

These crazy looking potato sticks, which look like they came from the depths of the ocean and belong in a Jacques Cousteau book, don’t actually taste like potatoes.

They taste like french toast sticks that weren’t actually made with any toast.

Sweet Potato Graham Cracker Sticks in jar

Haven’t you heard?  French toast that’s orange and bumpy is the best kind.

Sweet Potato Graham Cracker Sticks

Confused yet?  Okay, good.

Start with a dry rub of graham cracker crumbs, corn starch, cinnamon and sugar, and beat an egg.

Bowl of graham cracker crumbs and corn starch

Slice the potato into sticks.

Sweet potato sticks

Batter and bread the sticks, and place them on the lined baking sheet.

Sweet potato sticks with bowl of graham cracker crumbs and eggs

It’s okay if you have excess mixture at the bottom of your baking sheet.  The excess crumbs and egg run-off turns into the sweetest tasting “bread crust” on the “French Toast” sticks.

Graham Cracker sweet potatoes before cooking

And those blobs of graham cracker crumbs, cinnamon, and sugar?

Graham Cracker sweet potatoes before cooking

They bake up into an almost streusel-like topping for the potato sticks French Toast sticks.

I’ve heard of self-glazing cakes before and I’d call these little spuds self-glazing or self-streuseling.

Graham Cracker sweet potatoes after cooking

You could finish them off with a sprinkling of powdered sugar or serve them with warm maple syrup, but I don’t think they need anything more.

That’s a bold statement coming from me because I love a vat of syrup for two bites of pancakes.  I keep waitresses at pancake houses busy, asking for extra syrup x3.

Graham Cracker sweet potatoes sticks after cooking

Brown sugar and graham cracker crumbs can do no wrong.

These sticks were sweet and wonderful both from the dry-rub-turned-streusel-coating and because sweet potatoes are already sweet, which is how I prefer anything, including potatoes.

Graham Cracker sweet potatoes sticks in jar

Please trust me that despite these sticks looking like they hailed from another planet, they were ridiculously good.

Soft and tender like French toast.

Graham Cracker sweet potatoes sticks

If you are looking for crispy ‘n crunchy potato sticks, these are not that.  Try these potatoes instead.

If potatoes can masquerade as French Toast, or as dessert, this is how to pull it off.

Graham Cracker sweet potatoes sticks in jar

 

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Sweet Potato Graham Cracker “French Toast” Sticks (with Gluten-Free and Vegan suggestions)

1 large sweet potato or yam

1 egg, beaten

1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs

1/3 cup cornstarch

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup white sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375F and prepare a baking sheet with a Silpat liner, foil, parchment paper (lining your sheet will save you immense headache in the cleanup process). Peel the sweet potato, rinse it with water, and slice it into sticks about 1 centimeter wide (the length does not matter as much as the width). In a large bowl, beat an egg with a fork and place the sweet potato sticks into the egg mixture and toss. In another large bowl, combine all the dry ingredients and stir to create the dry rub. Grab a handful of egg-coated sweet potatoes and toss them in the dry mixture, then place them on the prepared pan. Repeat with all remaining potatoes. If you have extra egg mixture or extra dry rub, you can sprinkle that over the top of the sweet potatoes on the baking sheet before baking them. I used up all the coating mixture in the photos shown, but if you do not want your sticks as breaded, don’t dredge them as fully with dry rub. Bake potatoes for 30 minutes, then flip them. The will likely have become stuck to the pan so use a spatula and flip the entire thing over. Bake for another 10 to 20 minutes, and use your judgment based on browning levels, thickness your coating mixture was applied, the size of your potato sticks, and personal taste preferences. Remove from the oven and if the potatoes are stuck together, either tear them apart with your hands after they’ve cooled a bit or place them on a cutting board and slice with a knife as needed. Serve immediately, with or without a dusting of powdered sugar over the top or maple syrup for dipping. Store extras in an airtight container for up to 2 days on the countertop, using common sense. They won’t stay crispy and will become almost donut-like and spongecake-like the longer they are stored.

To keep gluten-free, use gluten-free graham crackers. To keep vegan, replace the egg with a chia or flax egg or other liquid egg replacer.

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These potatoes made a potato lover out of me.  I made this recipe with sweet potatoes, not yams, but as discussed last week, Americans tend to use the names interchangeably and sometimes incorrectly.

Graham Cracker sweet potatoes sticks in jar

And I’ve nearly confused myself when it comes to tubers.

There are so many varieties of sweet potatoes, and yams, which adds to the name-game confusion.

Two sweet potatoes

All I know if if I can make plain ole orange-colored potatoes taste like rich, sweet, decadent baked french toast, I’m not going to get hung up on nomenclature.

Sweet Potato Graham Cracker Sticks

I’ve got sweet crust bites to nibble on.

Sweet Potato Graham Cracker Sticks in jar

If you’d like to try something a little less sweet and decadent, while still using sweet potatoes, try Roasted Sweet Potato Fries

Roasted Sweet Potato Fries
Roasted Sweet Potato Fries

I also made Cinnamon Sugar & Ginger Roasted Potato Sticks from regular Russet baking potatoes when I was trying to butter Scott up awhile back.

Cinnamon Sugar & Ginger Roasted Potato Sticks

Last week I made Caribbean Citrus Roasted Sweet Potatoes.  Crunchy on the outside, soft ‘ n tender on the inside.

Caribbean Citrus Roasted Sweet Potatoes

It’s been very tuberous here lately.

Are you a potato fan or a sweet potato fan?  Do you label yams and sweet potatoes interchangeably?  Do you know how to tell the difference?

As I’ve mentioned, potatoes in general aren’t my biggest love.  They’re fine, but they’re not something I go out of my way for because I’d rather allot my mindless carb-eating to something more useful.  Like a donut.

But I will say that if all potatoes taste like French toast, potatoes may be replacing donuts.

I thought I finally had it figured out but realized that true yams are rare in the U.S. and that most of us are probably eating sweet potatoes, rather than yams, in one of their many different varieties, shapes, and colors.

Are you a French toast fan?

I love French toast but it’s been ages since I’ve made it.  Must work on that.

I prefer French toast to pancakes and I’d say that it ties with waffles.  I don’t have a waffle iron though.  Must work on that, too.

What was the last “ulgy” food you ate that tasted great?

I don’t think most traditional “comfort food” is all that pretty.  Foods like soup, chili, mac ‘n cheese, beans, casseroles, dips and anything that’s warm, mushy, soft, or brown is notoriously hard to photograph but it sure can taste great.  Don’t judge a book by the cover, I say.

As photography went, I had a ball photographing these spuds.  I thought they were going to be my nemesis but it turns out I had lots of fun with my extra-terrestrial taters and the light was hitting them so perfectly.

Have a great week!

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Comments

  1. While I am enjoying alot of your creative recipes…… I cant help but notice you use alot of, well, boxes of “garbage,” oreo cookies etc. I guess I thought you would stay on the healthy side. Oh well. Ill just skip those.

    1. Some of the things I made 2+ years ago are not things that I would make today. Life is a journey, people change, life ebbs and flows. Mine just happens to be documented on a blog. I’m sure you’ve eaten or made things in the past that you don’t make anymore or that you’ve on from for whatever reason. That said, everything in moderation and not being hyper-critical of things (or people) is an approach I find that works well in life.

  2. WOW! These look delicious. I love the addition of the graham crackers. Really this is a genius recipe!

    1. I almost linked to it in your comments but didn’t want to be tacky b/c some people don’t like that but glad you found them anyway! They are sooo good. The pics don’t do them justice and if there was ever a recipe that tastes amazing but due to photography and the way the food looks inherently will just never get the proper love it deserves, this is that recipe. But the taste is amazing!

  3. Hi Averie…I have tried many of your recipes and love them! Mostly the vegetarian and vegan though because I’m trying to change my eating habits and eliminate super processed foods from my diet. Do you think using Sucanat instead of white sugar would change the taste of these…which look fabulous? I am not opposed to white sugar if it will totally change the flavor profile…especially if I am using a flax egg instead of real egg. What do you think?

    1. I would say you’ll be fine with the sucanat…but really there is only 1/4 c white sugar in the whole recipe and some of that is going to be lost to the baking pan as the little clumps will fall off, so really not over-doing it by any means but go with what you feel like doing and I’m sure it will be fine!

  4. We do use “sweet potatoes” and “yams” pretty interchangeably here in the states – I have to admit I’m not very well educated on the difference. I would say, though, that loving sweet potatoes and being a potato lover isn’t quite the same. Sweet “potatoes” have far more nutrients and aren’t quite as much useless starch as your average Idaho potato! I love my french fries as much as the next person, but sweet potatoes are where it’s at! :)

  5. This sounds like a great recipe, but PLEASE, PLEASE remove the words “Gluten-Free” from the recipe. There are so many individuals looking for gluten free recipes who are new to the diet and would not recognize that the pictured ingredients are not gluten free. You could note that gluten free graham cracker crumbs could be used to make the recipe gluten free. As a registered dietitian, I hope that we can keep those with celiac disease from suffering due to unnecessarily ingesting gluten. Those with this disease (approx. 1 in every 100 people) can not tolerate even a small amount of gluten.

  6. Good job for writing that sentence
    “Please do not judge a book by its cover”
    I was very scepticul when I saw that picture
    But now I say Yum…

  7. Averie, I just discovered your blog this morning via Pinterest and let me just say I already made one of your recipes! (the homemade peanut butter-which was so delectable!) I digress. I love that you make many of your recipes GF or vegan, is there any way you could make this one GF? Thanks and love, love, love you and your blog!

    1. thanks for finding me and for already making the PB!

      I would say to keep this GF you can either 1. use GF graham crackers which are a bit hard to find but they do exist or 2. you could use another GF cracker that’s on the sweeter side. I would not use just plain GF flour or ground up almonds, ie. almond flour – either too bland or too prone to burning. I would use some sort of crushed GF cracker that you know you like and could see working in a sweet application, i.e. don’t use the equivalent of hot and spicy cheeze-it’s and then crush those up :)

  8. NEED. NOW. I’m a sweet potato junkie! Love my healthy baked sweet P fries, plain ol’ baked sweet potatoes, sweet P casserole… you name it, I love it. These, + my love for French toast (French toast > pancakes anyday in my book!!) are a must-make.