Baked Bourbon Spiced Sweet Potatoes

  These sweet potatoes, from the great bourbon producing state of Tennessee, are a departure from the mashed sweet potatoes covered with marshmallows that have been traditional.  But, in this house, we're all adults, and some of us like bourbon  better than marshmallows. Besides the bourbon, this recipe has several high quality ingredients that never fail to please, such as  butter, heavy cream and sugar. So how can  you go wrong?
As I write this, a guest on the NPR program Splendid Table, is denouncing the Farm Bill and its possible role in contributing to obesity. Okay.  This is not an everyday kind of dish. It's a once a year kind of a dish. If  you want to cook a nutritious sweet potato dish, you can cut them into fries,  brush them with oil and  bake them. Those are full of vitamin A and probably have one- twentieth of the calories of this  recipe.  But we're talking about Thanksgiving here.
One good thing about this recipe is, the sweet potatoes are baked,  as advertised in the title.  You can put them in the oven with the turkey and go out for a walk to clear your head of  turkey fumes before dinner. Then, the crisp skins break open, and you can just scrape the potato out with a spoon. It's practically mashed already, and much easier to deal with than boiled sweet potatoes. I would add the caveat that, if your traditional Thanksgiving dinner contains mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes, four servings will probably be more than enough for eight or nine diners. Also  if you don't usually drink hard liquor, get a half pint bottle of  bourbon. You'll use it up faster.

 Baked Bourbon Sweet Potatoes

4 sweet potatoes
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs, lightly beaten
 1/2 cup heavy cream
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/3 cup raisins
1/4 cup  bourbon

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. Scrub the potatoes and bake until tender, about forty minutes. peel and mash into a bowl.
3. Add the remaining ingredients and mix well. Turn into a greased casserole and bake until heated through, about ten minutes (or more) .  
Makes four servings.