Oven Baked Sweet Potato Fries – Great Flavor, Less Great Texture (User Error?)

With when some sweet potatoes unexpectedly arrived in a vegetable box delivery, I was inspired to try something new.  I found a spiced oven roasted sweet potato fries recipe after a bit of searching, and decided to give it a go after reading on other websites that cornstarch, the central component of this recipe, is the key to a crispy oven fry.

The flavor of these fries was fantastic with the smoked paprika and garlic powder, but they were not evenly crispy, nor that crispy overall.  I think that part of the reason is that I didn't use even cornstarch for the amount of sweet potatoes that I had, and I also think that I should have cut the sweet potato sticks even thinner.

I also think that I may not follow this particularly approach again because the amount of work that these fries took.  To start, you have to peel and cut them evenly, which took more time than I expected.

Then you soak the sticks for thirty minutes, before patting them completely dry.

Then drizzle the sticks with olive oil, before combining a cornstarch / spice mixture and evenly coating on the sticks.

Then finally layer the sweet potato sticks on the baking trays, bake for approx. 30 minutes, tossing once, and then serve after cooling for 5 minutes.

I think I'll probably use this same spice mix (sans cornstarch) in roasted sweet potato cubes or whole baked sweet potatoes in the future to combine the great flavors of this recipe with an easier preparation method.