George Washington Carver is well known for his development of 100s of products from the peanut grown in the American South. In fact, he is so well known that he appears on Good Eats with McGyver... er ... "Brown" something ... Young Goodman Brown ...er...whatever.

Sweet potatoes were the basis for dozens of additional useful inventions produced by Mr. Carver. He made everything, from delicious food dishes to medicines to household cleaning agents from this one plant.

Carver never patented any of his products, preferring to share them freely with the world. That's one difference between George Washington Carver and Bill Gates. Mr. Carver might have become a multi-billionaire in the 21st Century, or he might have chosen to help end world hunger. If anyone could do it, it was he.

Even though you can make shoe polish from sweet potatoes, they are still just plain good to eat.

The following recipes have roots in George Washington Carver's own research and cooking manuals and I;ve done some experimenting. You can too, adding speces and other ingredients. I wish Mr. Carver were still here so we could talk to him - maybe ask him about today's food manufacturing processes and health foods. Corn syrup - I want to ask him about that one.

For now, we will have to be satisfied with visiting his entertaining ghost, seen in the videos below. What's an iPeanut, anyway?

INGREDIENTS

• 3 Cups all purpose flour
• 2 Whole eggs
• 1 Cup cooked and mashed sweet potatoes
• 1 Cup sugar
• 3 Tbsp melted butter
• ½ tsp baking soda
• 1 Cup buttermilk
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon

INSTRUCTIONS

• In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs until they are light yellow.
• Stir eggs while adding in the sugar, butter, and buttermilk. Mix well.
• In a second bowl, place the all purpose flour. Add to it the salt, baking soda, and cinnamon and combine thoroughly so that all ingredients are even distributed. (Ever get a mouthful of baking soda when you were expecting sugar? – Not nice at all.)
• Stir the flour mixture into the fluffy egg mixture, carefully; mix well and then stir in the mashed sweet potatoes. If the batter is runny, add some more flour to make stiff enough for rolling out (Ever try to roll out pancake batter? – I didn’t think so. – Not good at all.)
• Roll out the donutty dough, cut it out into rounds with a donut cutter or just the mouth of a clean drinking glass. Fry the donuts in deep hot vegetable or peanut oil (Peanuts were Carver’s other specialty). Remember to turn them over after teh first side is golden brown, and fry the second side.
• Drain on paper towels and serve. You can sprinkle some pwdered sugar over them, but they might be sweet enough without it. 

INGREDIENTS

• 1 One-Pound Sweet Potato
• 2 Tbsp butter
• Salt to taste
• ½ Cup milk
• 2 Whole eggs, beaten well
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 Cup or more of all purpose flour

INSTRUCTIONS

• Preheat oven to 350 Degrees F.
• Boil the sweet potato in salted water untilit is fork- soft. Drain water and peel the potato.
• In a mixing bowl, mash the potato until it is smooth (or process in a food processor).
• Add butter and salt to the potato and mix thoroughly. 
• Carefuily pour in the milk, mix, and and beaten eggs and mix again. Adding them seperately will make for a lighter consistency muffin.
• Sift 1 teaspoon of baking powder into 2 Cups of flout and it to the wet mixture until youhave a soft and smooth batter, but not runny.
• Pour into an oiled or baking-sprayed muffin pan.
• Bake 20 minutes or until knife blade inserted into a muffin center comes out clean.

Serves several

INGREDIENTS

• 4 Medium sweet potatoes, about ½ pound in weight each – washed and peeled
• 4 Medium-to-large eating apples – washed and peeled
• 1.5 Cups white or light brown sugar
• Cinnamon, to taste (optional)
• 1 stick of butter, cut into slices
• 12 ounces hot water
• Rectangular baking dish, as for cobbler – lightly coated with cooking spray

INSTRUCTIONS

• Preheat oven to 350 Degrees F.
• Cut up sweet potatoes into ¼-inch thick slices.
• Core apples and cut them into ¼-to-½-inch thick slices.
• Starting with sweet potato slices, build layers of potatoes, followed by apples, until a baking dish is filled.
• Sprinkle sugar over the top of the uppermost layer.  Add a even sprinkle of cinnamon now, if you want to use it.
• Distribute butter slices over the top layer.
• Carefully and evenly pour in the hot water.
• Bake for 60 minutes and test for doneness (if it’s too runny cook a bit longer. Use a foil tent over the top if it browns too fast.

George Washington Carver studied plants to such an extent that he created at least 300 inventions from peanuts and sweet potatoes alone.

Additional wweet potato products (besides shoe polish and food dishes) that Mr. Carver developed include over 70 different color dyes, sweet potato flour, several wood fillers, confections, an assorment of library pastes, breakfast foods, laundry starches, 3 sorts of molasseses, a type of vinegar, and instant coffee.

One dish that I have not found among Mr. Carver's works, but which is very good when you can find it, is the sweet potato chip. If see any, purchase them and see if you don't like them better than regular chips.