When you want a sweet treat in the summer, it’s only natural to reach for a popsicle or an ice cream bar. Cold, refreshing, and easy to eat on the go, they’re quintessential warm-weather treats. But as we enter autumn and the temperatures finally begin to drop, the craving for ice cream doesn’t go away, nor should it.
In fact, as pumpkin spice lattes and apple-cinnamon spice everything take over store shelves, frozen treats have gotten their own autumnal glow-up. These days, you can find pumpkin pie ice cream, maple leaf ice cream sandwiches and even caramel apple mochi ice cream at places like Trader Joe’s and Costco.
Still, the most surprising frozen fall treat I’ve come across lately isn’t stocked in any grocery store freezer section. Instead, it’s gone viral on TikTok, where people are calling it “nature’s popsicle”. Enter the frozen baked sweet potato.
The concept is simple: bake a sweet potato until soft and caramelized, freeze it, then eat it cold, straight from the freezer. The hype around this snack is massive. Commenters rave about its natural sweetness, creamy texture and dessert-like flavor. One TikTok user even proclaimed, “It literally tastes like an ice cream bar.”
That bold statement was enough to pique my curiosity. As someone who loves ice cream in all forms and also has a soft spot for seasonal root vegetables, I had to try it for myself. I’ll admit, I was skeptical…I mean, could a frozen sweet potato really compare to ice cream? But after giving it a go, I was genuinely surprised. Here’s what I discovered.
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What Is the Viral Frozen Baked Sweet Potato?
The viral frozen baked sweet potato was originally popularized by chef George Lee, who calls this snack a real Taiwanese classic in his video and posts.
“These sweet potatoes are baked to caramel-sweet perfection, then frozen to achieve an almost popsicle-like texture,” he wrote in an Instagram post. “In Taiwan, these are so commonplace you’ll find them packaged in 7-Eleven. And oddly enough, it’s some of the best sweet potatoes you’ve ever had.”
According to Lee, food science is behind the brilliance of the sweet potato. “The freezing process creates an abundance of ‘resistant starch,’ which passes through the small intestine without getting digested and instead feeds bacterial fermentation in the colon,” he shared in his post. (It sounds too good to be true, but resistant starch is an actual thing with real health benefits.)
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Ingredients You Need to Make The Viral Frozen Baked Sweet Potato
You don’t need much to make a frozen baked sweet potato. In fact, Lee says that all you need is a sweet potato. He recommends looking for Taiwanese, Japanese or Korean sweet potatoes but, in my experience, these are hard to find in your average American grocery store. So…just do your best.
Lee does caution against using an Okinawan sweet potato, which has purple flesh. This is too starchy to work for this hack, he explains.
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How to Make The Viral Frozen Baked Sweet Potato
Like the ingredients list, the recipe for the frozen baked sweet potato is incredibly simple. First, preheat your oven to 450°. While it’s heating up, wash your potato well and dry it thoroughly.
Once your oven is hot, put your sweet potato directly on the oven rack and let it bake for 40 to 80 minutes, depending on the size and shape of your potato. (Place a sheet pan on the rack below to catch any drips.) To tell when your potato is done, poke and tap the skin. It should feel separate from the flesh and have a hollow sound. Then, pull out your potato and let it cool. Once it’s fully cooled, put it in a freezer-safe bag and place your potato in the freezer for about four hours.
If you freeze the sweet potato overnight, pull it out and let it thaw for about 10 minutes before taking a bite.
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My Honest Thoughts On The Viral Frozen Baked Sweet Potato
After trying this and really thinking about it, I can confidently say this frozen baked sweet potato nowhere resembles an ice cream bar in taste. That is, unless your go-to ice cream flavor is savory sweet potato. But it’s definitely an interesting snack, and it was better than I expected.
I doubted that my end result would be anything more than a rock-solid hunk of potato, but the frozen baked sweet potato does develop a soft texture that’s kind of ice cream-like. That said, I’m not buying the reactions of people on TikTok who look like they’re eating the best thing ever when they bite into these.
I suspect part of the issue might be the variety used—it looked like a Garnet sweet potato. After spotting some Japanese sweet potatoes at my Trader Joe’s, I decided to give one a try. Using the Japanese sweet potato definitely elevated the snack, though it still isn’t an ice cream bar. The texture is creamier, and the flavor is sweeter and more delicate, which made it a more enjoyable frozen treat overall.
Most of us know what an ice cream bar tastes like. So, when someone claims that a frozen baked sweet potato tastes like one, you have a certain idea in your head. All of that said, the viral frozen baked sweet potato isn’t bad. I just need all of us to agree that it’s not ice cream!
If you like sweet potatoes and want to try them a different way, or if you’re just interested in having a cool new frozen snack, this viral frozen baked sweet potato is worth a try. Just set your expectations accordingly.
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