Sweet Potato (スイートポテト)

Satsumaimo tells you when autumn has arrived. The skin goes wine-purple, the flesh turns golden, and the sweetness deepens enough that a careful cook only has to help it along. This Sweet Potato is yōgashi, Western-style Japanese confectionery, but the heart of it is very Japanese: choose the potato at its shun, then don't smother it.

The one detail that decides the dish is how you cook the satsumaimo. Roast it slowly, whole in its skin, and the flesh becomes sweet, dense, and fragrant. Boil it and you gain speed, yes, but you also wash away flavor and invite water into a sweet that should hold its shape. We are making a small cake, not mashed potatoes in a polite hat.

Once the potato is roasted, the work is plain. Mash it while warm, pass it through a sieve if you want the fine shop texture, then season with butter, sugar, egg yolk, cream, and a little mirin. The mirin is not decoration. It rounds the sweetness and gives the glaze a quiet shine. Pipe or spoon the mixture into small ovals, brush with yolk, and bake until the tops gleam. Honmono, but entirely within reach.