Candied Sweet Potatoes with Marshmallows

My grandmother never measured anything for this dish. She’d peel four sweet potatoes, slice them, pour some orange juice over them, drop butter in — “enough butter” — and shake brown sugar over the top until it looked right. I asked her once how much cinnamon and she held up two fingers and said, “about this much.”

This recipe for candied sweet potatoes is my attempt to write down what “about this much” actually means. Same result as hers: sweet potato rounds so soft they give at the edge of a fork, glazed in a brown sugar and butter sauce that goes thick and almost caramel-like in the oven. And the marshmallow topping broiled golden, puffed, just barely toasted on top. You pull the dish from the oven and the whole kitchen smells like November.

It’s a holiday side dish. But I won’t pretend we don’t make it in August sometimes.

Why the orange juice is in there

A lot of candied sweet potato recipes skip any liquid at all, or just use water. The orange juice does something specific here. It adds a faint citrus note that cuts the sweetness just enough — you don’t taste “orange” exactly, but the dish doesn’t taste flat the way it does with water. It also adds enough liquid to keep the glaze from scorching during the covered bake phase.

The two-phase bake is the other thing worth understanding before you start. The first 35 minutes happen under tight foil — the sweet potatoes steam in the glaze and go completely tender. The next 15 to 20 minutes happen uncovered, which lets the liquid evaporate and the sauce reduce into something thick and syrupy that coats each slice.

If you skip the covered phase, the edges caramelize before the centers cook through. If you skip the uncovered phase, the sauce stays thin and watery. Both matter.

Eight ingredients — what each one does

this now & bake later ❤️

The sweet potatoes themselves: four large ones, peeled and sliced into rounds about half an inch thick. Uniform thickness is the actual goal here, not a guideline. Thin slices fall apart before thick ones are even tender. I use a ruler the first time at a new stove. After that you can eyeball it.

One cup of packed brown sugar. Packed — spoon it in and press it down. Light or dark brown sugar both work; dark gives a slightly more molasses-forward flavor, which I personally prefer, but light is what most people have. Either is fine.

Half a cup of butter. Unsalted, cut into small pieces so it melts evenly into the glaze. This is not the recipe to swap for olive oil or coconut oil — the butter flavor is part of what makes this taste like candied sweet potatoes and not roasted ones.

The quarter cup of orange juice, one teaspoon each of cinnamon and vanilla, and a quarter teaspoon of nutmeg all go into the glaze together. The salt is technically optional but it rounds out the sweetness in a way that makes a real difference — don’t skip it.

Two cups of mini marshmallows for the top. Mini, not large. Large marshmallows don’t toast evenly and leave you with a gummy layer underneath a burned outside. The minis puff evenly and toast across the surface the way you see in the photo — golden brown all over, not scorched in patches.

How to make it

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Peel the sweet potatoes and slice them into half-inch rounds. Arrange them in a 9×13 baking dish — they can overlap slightly, the way you see in the photo, but try to get them into something close to a single layer so the glaze reaches every piece.

Make the glaze in a small saucepan over medium heat. Combine the brown sugar, butter, orange juice, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, and salt and stir until the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved, about 3 minutes. Don’t let it boil — you just want everything combined and warm. Pour it over the sweet potatoes and tilt the dish to distribute it.

Cover the dish tightly with aluminum foil and bake for 35 minutes. The sweet potatoes will soften and the glaze will start pulling in their natural liquid — the liquid level in the dish will actually rise during this phase.

Remove the foil. Spoon the glaze from the bottom of the pan back over the potato slices. Return to the oven uncovered for 15 to 20 more minutes. Halfway through that uncovered bake, do one more spoon-over. The sauce is ready when it coats the back of a spoon and the sweet potato edges are starting to darken and caramelize at the rim of the dish.

Pull the dish out and scatter the mini marshmallows in an even layer over the top. Switch the oven to broil and set the dish on the middle rack — not the top rack, or the marshmallows hit the element before they’ve had time to puff. Watch them the entire time. They go from puffing to perfectly golden to burned in about 90 seconds. Don’t trust a timer for this. Stand there. Pull the dish the moment the tops turn amber-gold and you see the toasted color you see in the photo.

Let the dish rest for 5 minutes before serving — the glaze is hot enough to burn, and the marshmallow layer needs a moment to settle and stop moving.

What I’ve learned making this every November

The make-ahead question: you can bake the sweet potatoes through the uncovered phase, let the dish cool, refrigerate it overnight, and then add the marshmallows and broil right before serving. The glaze may need a few spoonfuls of orange juice stirred in and a reheat in the oven at 325°F covered for 20 minutes before the marshmallows go on.

What doesn’t work: fully assembled with marshmallows, this doesn’t hold well. The marshmallow topping weeps overnight and goes soft. Make the potato base ahead if you need to — but broil the marshmallows right before you bring the dish to the table.

On substitutions: maple syrup in place of some of the brown sugar (half and half) gives a slightly different sweetness that’s good if you want a less candy-forward version. Apple juice works instead of orange juice if that’s what you have. Both change the flavor profile modestly and neither ruins anything.

Serves 6 as a side dish. Leftovers reheat in a 325°F covered oven for 15 minutes — the marshmallows won’t look the same but the potato and glaze underneath is still very good the next day.

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