I was looking for something completely unrelated in "On Food and Cooking" and I came across the section on sweet potatoes. Mcgee states that at 57C an enzyme in the potato is activated that converts the starch to a sugar called maltose. This process stops at 75C when the enzyme is denatured. This explains why sweet potatoes will ooze syrup and have a completely different quality when cooked slowly in an oven as opposed to moist cooking methods. According to the book some varieties convert up to 75% of their starch to maltose.
So lets cook a sweet potato around 62-65C for a long time and see what happens. Eventually in theory up to 75% of the starch will be converted to maltose syrup. The sweet potato will confit itself without any additional ingredients. Maybe we could collect the syrup and use it for another application. Whip it with versawhip, whipped sweet potato.
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