These roasted sweet potato rounds are covered in a spicy maple glaze and then topped with a fresh garlicky thyme sauce. Serve them as a delicious and festive fall appetizer or whip them up as a quick side dish for your weeknight meals!
After making a batch of maple glazed prosciutto wrapped dates with goat cheese, I’ve been adding a bit of maple syrup to everything from my morning coffee to these roasted sweet potato rounds! For this fall-inspired appetizer, the glaze gets a bit of a kick from spicy cayenne, which balances out the sweetness of the maple and sweet potatoes. And while you could definitely stop there and have an amazing dish, I like to go one step further and make an incredibly simple dipping sauce. Flavored with garlic and thyme, it adds a bit of light freshness and also offsets the cayenne for those who might be spice averse!
sweet potato rounds
My favorite way to eat sweet potatoes is to cut them into rounds. Rounds cook faster than whole sweet potatoes and every piece has a bit of the crispy peel attached. While you don’t have to leave the skin on for this recipe, I would recommend using unpeeled sweet potatoes if you don’t mind the taste. Not only does it save you the time in peeling, but the skin also contains a lot of the root vegetable’s nutritional value!
To roast these sweet potato rounds to perfection, I like to cut them so that they’re about ½ inch (1.5 cm) in thickness and toss them with a bit of olive oil and salt. For medium-sized sweet potatoes, the bake time is generally only about 35 minutes in total. I flip them once after 25 minutes, which is also when I put the glaze on. If your sweet potatoes are a bit larger, you can increase the cook time, but the glaze should only be added for the last 10 minutes!
spicy maple glaze
When the sweet potato rounds are almost ready, it’s time to add the spicy maple glaze — a mixture of just maple syrup, cayenne and garlic powder! Adding the glaze in the last ten minutes helps to ensure that the sweet potatoes don’t burn. Although it’s an additional step, it only takes a minute and the shape of the rounds makes it incredibly easy to brush on!
One tip: I like to lightly glaze the top of the rounds right out of the oven, flip them and then use the majority of the glaze for the side that will now be face up. It just adds a little extra crispiness and flavor!
garlicky thyme dipping sauce
And last but not least, the dipping sauce! Sweet potato fries always get a dipping sauce so rounds deserve one too, right? The sauce is easy to prepare and consists of just five ingredients: sour cream, mayo, lemon juice, chopped fresh thyme and minced garlic. Stir it all together, add a pinch of salt and it’s ready!
When we eat these spicy rounds for dinner, we tend to just serve the sauce on the side. But as an appetizer you can also put a dollop of the garlicky sauce on each round and top with a few leaves of fresh thyme to up your presentation game!
ingredients
spicy maple glazed sweet potato rounds
- sweet potatoes 2 medium
- olive oil 2 tbsp
- salt to taste
- maple syrup 4 tbsp
- cayenne ½ tsp
- garlic powder ½ tsp
garlicky thyme sauce
- sour cream ⅓ c (80 g)
- mayonnaise ¼ c (60 g)
- lemon juice 1 tbsp
- minced garlic 3 cloves
- chopped thyme 1 tsp
- salt to taste
instructions
spicy maple glazed sweet potato rounds
- Preheat oven to 425 F (220 C) and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Scrub the sweet potatoes and cut them into rounds about ½ inch (1.5 cm) thick. I leave the sweet potato skin on, but you can peel them if you'd like.
- Mix the sweet potatoes with the olive oil and a pinch of salt. Bake on the prepared baking sheet for 25 minutes.
- While the sweet potatoes are baking, mix together the maple syrup, cayenne and garlic powder.
- Remove the sweet potatoes from the oven and brush with the maple glaze. Flip and brush the other side.
- Return to the oven and bake for 10 minutes.
garlicky thyme sauce
- Mix together all ingredients and store in the refrigerator.
Did You Make This Recipe?
This post may contain affiliate links through which we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. We only recommend products that we genuinely love and would use ourselves.
