The last time I had twice baked potatoes was at a “progressive dinner” with my neighbors in Stillwater, OK – you know, where you have a different part of a meal at a different home throughout the course of an evening. I was the last house of the evening, and so provided the dessert – Christmas cookies and hot chocolate, but our neighbors Dawn and Carl had the main course which included twice baked potatoes. They were delicious, and I was so impressed!

So…we were having a few families over for a cookout last week and I thought I would make potato skins. The last time I made them though, I didn’t make good use of the inside part of the potato, so at the last minute I remembered Dawn and Carl’s twice baked potatoes, and decided to switch gears. I don’t have a recipe for twice baked potatoes, but how hard could it be??

So, I still don’t really have a recipe, but you can sort of see the steps in these photos. First, bake whole potatoes at 400 degrees for 45 minutes- 1 hour or until tender. Cut potatoes in half lengthwise, let cool a bit and then scoop out inside leaving skin and a thin layer of potato pulp. (What do you call the inside of a potato?) Mash the pulp you removed just as if you were making mashed potatoes: add butter, milk, salt, and pepper – even cream cheese, sour cream, or yogurt. Spoon this mashed mixture back into the potato skin shells, sprinkle with cheese and bacon, and bake again at 400 degrees for 15 minutes or until warmed through and cheese is melted on top.

You can get pretty creative with this, actually. I pulled some of those “pesto pops” from last week out of my freezer and stirred them into half of the mashed mixture making pesto potatoes…and pressing fresh garlic into the mixture would also be delicious! Of course, the bacon ones flew off the serving platter first…what can hold a candle to bacon??? But the pesto ones were also very yummy and were even better as leftovers the next day!
Enjoy!