I like to cook them until I can see the juice oozing out and caramelizing a bit. Err on the side of over-cooking (this will make mashing so much easier!) This also gives them a deeper, almost caramelized flavor. I typically do this the night before I plan to make pancakes while I clean up from dinner and then start with the next step in the morning. This way, the sweet potatoes have cooled and don’t destroy my fingers when I remove the skin and mash them, and I don’t have much to do in the morning.

That said, if you, like, NEED sweet potato pancakes one morning and didn’t do this step the night before, and you don’t want to wait 45 minutes to bake sweet potatoes, you can prick them all over with a fork and then microwave them until soft. Should only take a few minutes (microwave the sweet potatoes in increments of 1 min and poke them with a fork to see when they’re soft all the way through). Just be careful when peeling/mashing the hot potatoes to protect your fingers from blistery doom.

This recipe assumes you will have roughly 3 cups of mashed sweet potato following this step, but keep in mind that this recipe is very flexible and the measurements don’t need to be precise. 

Since I usually fry these in butter, I typically don’t offer them to my kids with any toppings. I may be the weird one in that I actually don’t like syrup on my pancakes – my husband will typically give the kids maple syrup (but to his credit, he generally trades tiny pours of syrup for them eating other stuff on the plate, like eggs).