Holiday Sweet Potato Salad

I am actually going to post a recipe here. For a long time, I've had a vision of a sweet potato salad recipe that has the typically things that you'd find in holiday sweet potato casseroles. I had a very nice picture of it... but I totally deleted it on my camera before I could transfer it over. THAT was bound to happen sometime... at least it was a picture of food vs. my son.

So the challenge was what I would use in place of the mayo you typically find in a potato salad. I perused a lot of recipes of what people use in their holiday potatoes and oranges kept coming up, so I thought of an orange vinegraitte.

It turned out really good. The best thing is that really you can put whatever you want in it. I found that this recipe was really 4-5 servings... so if you were going to make it for a BBQ, you may want to double it. Silly me didn't measure out anything when I created it.. so I am going to do my best to put amounts on the ingredients.


Holiday Sweet Potato Salad

Ingredients:

2-3 large sweet potatoes: peeled, diced and steamed or boiled.
1 cup mini marshmallows (I used the colored ones and it looked very nice)
2 Tbsp brown sugar
1/2 cup finely chopped pecans
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp allspice or nutmeg

For the dressing:

1 small can mandarin oranges, juice saved
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1/4 cup oil
2 tsp honey
1/8 tsp black pepper

1/2 c whipped topping (optional)

Directions:

1. After cooking sweet potatoes, put in refrigerator to cool completely ~ 1 hour... or you can set them in a bowl of cold water to cool quicker.
2. Put cooked sweet potatoes, marshmallows, brown sugar, pecans, cinnamon and allspice in a large bowl.
3. Make the dressing: Pour the mandarin orange juice into a blender or food processor. Add 1/4 c (or more if you like) of the oranges also. Add the rest of the ingredients and blend until completely combined.
4. Pour the dressing over the sweet potato mix. (You may not need all of the dressing depending upon how "wet" you want it.)
5. Stir in whipped topping if desired.

Enjoy! If you make this.. I'd love to hear your comments, opinions.