Cheese-Stuffed Sweet Potato

Why This Went Viral

Courtney Cook (@courtneylcook) is a Georgia teacher who posts her school lunches on TikTok. On November 13, 2025 she put up a video of a slow-baked sweet potato that she ate like a sandwich, spooning slabs of German Butterkäse into the middle as she went. That video and the ones after it each passed 7 million views. Ammerländer, which makes the cheese, said in December that its Butterkäse was "sold out everywhere," and Alex Guarnaschelli made one with American cheese and gave it a 10/10. The joke is that it barely counts as a recipe. The low oven is what makes it work: a long bake followed by a rest in the cooling oven turns the flesh syrupy, close to sweet potato pie, and the cheese melts into it. It peaked over the winter, and we're making it now because sweet potato season is back. To be clear, we couldn't confirm a fresh wave of posts in the last few weeks.

Ingredients

Main Components

• 4 medium orange-fleshed sweet potatoes (about 10 oz / 280 g each), similar in size and shape
• 1 teaspoon (5 ml) neutral oil or olive oil
• 6 oz (170 g) Butterkäse cheese, cut into 12 thick slabs (about 1½ oz / 45 g per potato)

For Finishing

• ½ teaspoon flaky sea salt (such as Maldon)
• Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
• Optional toppings: 2 scallions thinly sliced, ¼ cup quick-pickled red onions, or a drizzle of hot honey

Substitutions:

• Butterkäse → young Havarti, Muenster, or Monterey Jack melt about the same and taste just as mild. Raclette melts better and tastes nuttier. Block mozzarella works too, but it's blander. Use a block, not string cheese. All of these are still dairy.
• Orange sweet potatoes → Japanese sweet potatoes (purple skin, pale flesh) are drier and taste more like chestnut. They need the full 90 minutes.
• Butterkäse → for a dairy-free version, use a meltable plant-based block cheese. Check the label, because some contain nuts or soy.

Equipment

• Rimmed baking sheet lined with parchment or foil (to catch the sugary drips, which burn onto the pan)
• Fork or paring knife
• Spoon for scooping the cheese, or a knife

Instructions

Preparation (Active time: 5 min)

1. Heat the oven: Set a rack in the middle and preheat to 300°F (150°C). The low temperature matters. Sweet potatoes have an enzyme that turns starch into maltose, and it works hardest between about 135°F and 170°F (57–77°C). A slow oven keeps the potato in that range longer, so it gets sweeter and more jammy than it would at 400°F.
2. Prep the potatoes: Scrub and dry the potatoes. Prick each one 4–5 times with a fork, rub them with the oil, and set them on the lined sheet with space between them. Don't wrap them in foil. Foil steams them and makes the rest step riskier (see Food Safety).

Baking (Hands-off: 75–90 min)

3. Bake low: Bake for 75–90 minutes. They're done when a paring knife slides into the thickest part with no resistance, the skins look slightly puffed and wrinkled, and dark syrup is bubbling out of the fork holes.

Resting (Hands-off: up to 2 hours)

4. Rest in the turned-off oven: Turn the oven off and leave the potatoes in with the door closed for at least 1 hour and up to 2. Over that time the flesh goes from fluffy to dense and syrupy. Courtney Cook rests hers for about 3 hours; we cap it at 2 so the cooked potatoes don't spend long at the temperatures where bacteria grow. They'll still be warm enough to melt the cheese.

Assembly & Finishing (Active time: 5 min)

5. Open them up: Cut a slit down the length of each potato, or cut off one end and eat it from the end like a sandwich, the way the original video does.
6. Add the cheese: Push 3 slabs of Butterkäse into each potato and let them sit for a minute to soften. If the potatoes have cooled too much to melt the cheese, put them back in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 5–8 minutes, or microwave each one for 30–45 seconds.
7. Finish and eat: Sprinkle with flaky salt and pepper and add any toppings you like. Eat it while the cheese is soft. Like the original, you can keep pushing in more cheese as you go.

Food Safety & Storage

• Safety note: There's no meat, poultry, or egg, so there's no minimum internal temperature to hit. The risk to watch is time. Cooked potatoes left warm in foil at room temperature can let Clostridium botulinum grow, so don't wrap them, and keep the rest in the oven to 2 hours or less. After that, either eat them or refrigerate them.
• Storage: Refrigerate unstuffed baked potatoes in an airtight container for up to 4 days. Add the cheese when you reheat them.
• Freezing: Baked, unstuffed sweet potatoes freeze well for up to 3 months. Wrap them individually and thaw overnight in the refrigerator.
• Reheating: Heat in a 350°F (175°C) oven or air fryer for 10–15 minutes, or microwave for 1½–2 minutes, until steaming in the center (165°F / 74°C). Then add the cheese.

Serving Suggestions

• A cup of black bean soup or chili turns it into a full meal.
• A sharp green salad with mustard vinaigrette helps cut through the sweetness and the cheese.
• Cook ate hers with spoonfuls of cottage cheese for extra protein (more dairy).
• Pickled red onions or pickled jalapeños are the toppings that keep showing up in the remix videos.

Scaling Notes

Half recipe (½×): Bake 2 potatoes using the same time and temperature. Bake time depends on the size of each potato, not on how many are in the oven.

Double recipe (2×): Use two baking sheets on two racks and switch their positions halfway through. Add about 10 minutes if the oven is crowded. For meal prep, you can bake 8 at once, refrigerate them unstuffed, and add cheese to one each day.

Chef's Notes

• Sourcing: You can find Butterkäse at Aldi (sold as Butterkäse) and at many deli counters. Ammerländer is the brand from the original video. Choose sweet potatoes of about the same size so they're done at the same time.
• Make-ahead: Bake and rest the potatoes, then refrigerate. The texture is honestly just as good cold-then-reheated, which is why this works as a packed lunch.
• Variations: @natti_lynn used cheddar, Gruyère, and a pat of butter. @audreyeatzz used asiago and cheddar with pickled onions and jalapeños. Chowhound recommends halving the potatoes, roasting them, and laying raclette on top for the last few minutes. Sip Bite Go uses block mozzarella with a little salted butter, at 400°F for 50 minutes. That's quicker, but less syrupy.
• Common pitfalls: If you pull the potatoes before the knife slides in easily, the cheese has nothing soft to melt into. Thin, skinny potatoes dry out during the long bake, so look for plump ones. Don't skip lining the pan, because the syrup that leaks out turns to burnt caramel on bare metal.
• On richness: With 1½ oz of cheese per potato, each serving has about 7–8 g of saturated fat, roughly 38% of the daily value. That's on the high side for a vegetable lunch, though nowhere near extreme. Some of the viral versions use twice as much cheese, plus butter. If you want it lighter, use 1 oz and add cottage cheese on the side.

Nutrition Information (Optional)

Per serving (1 stuffed potato, no optional toppings): approximately 410 kcal (estimated)

• Protein: 15g | Fat: 13g (Saturated: 7.5g) | Carbohydrates: 57g | Fiber: 8g | Sugar: ~18g (no added sugar; hot honey adds ~5g per teaspoon) | Sodium: ~450mg

Sources

• Courtney Cook (@courtneylcook) (TikTok, the original viral video, captioned "this sweet potato's been taking creatine #teacherlunch #butterkase"): @courtneylcook video
• Spoon University news story on the trend. Covers the 300°F, 1 hr 20 min bake, the rest, the 7M+ views, and the remixes by @natti_lynn and @audreyeatzz: spoonuniversity.com
• AOL, "A Cheese-Stuffed Sweet Potato Has Taken Over TikTok, Here’s Everything to Know About the Viral Lunch" (quoting People). Covers the Nov. 13, 2025 post date, the 300°F for 60–90 min bake plus a ~3 hr rest in the oven, Ammerländer's "sold out everywhere" comment, and Alex Guarnaschelli's 10/10: aol.com
• Tasting Table, "The Aldi Cheese That Turns Sweet Potatoes Into An Easy Comfort Dish" (Jan. 6, 2026). Butterkäse background: tastingtable.com
• Chowhound, "Make The Viral Cheesy Sweet Potato Even Better With One Melty Swap" (Feb. 12, 2026). The raclette variation: chowhound.com
• Sip Bite Go, "Viral Sweet Potato with Cheese" (Jenna Passaro, Jan. 26, 2026). A tested recipe using mozzarella and butter: sipbitego.com

Version History:

• v1 (2026-10-11): Initial recipe by @Claude

Credits:

• Recipe development: @Claude (adapted from the sources above)
• Testing: @Claude
• Verification: @Coordinator
• Photography: Jenna Passaro / Sip Bite Go, sipbitego.com (image source: https://sipbitego.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/viral-sweet-potato-with-cheese-recipe-closeup.jpg), used with attribution

Recipe Location: My-Library/Cooking/Recipes/Viral-Recipes/Recipes/2026-10-11_cheese-stuffed-sweet-potato.md Images Location: My-Library/Cooking/Recipes/Viral-Recipes/Images/cheese-stuffed-sweet-potato/