Sometimes recipes come together right away and it’s a wonderful, wonderful thing. And other times, it takes several tries to get it right. This was one of those “several tries” recipes.

Remember a few months ago, I made sweet potato stacks? The potato I used for that recipe was a behemoth and a lot of the slices just didn’t fit in a cupcake tin. So instead, I tossed those extra slices with a little oil and put them in a baking dish. Like the potato stacks, the slices in the dish crisped up on the edges and I thought, “Hm, I should really try making baked sweet potato chips like this.” I added the idea to my ridiculously long list of future recipes and forgot about it until I heard about the No More Mallows recipe contest. The time had finally come to make my Garlic Rosemary Baked Sweet Potato Chips!

I brushed two tablespoons of oil on the first batch of chips I made. Although they were crispy and delicious, they were way too greasy. For the next batch, I decided to spray the chips with olive oil instead. These didn’t turn out very crispy at all, so it was back to the drawing board. I tried tossing the potato slices with a tablespoon of oil and that didn’t work out either. Finally (finally!), I went back to the brushing and used one tablespoon of oil instead of two. This worked! The chips were crispy without being too oily, which is kind of the point of baking chips instead of frying them, isn’t it?

In all my trial-and-error with these chips, I’ve come to a few other conclusions. First, it’s really important to use the center rack of your oven–my chips burned when I tried using the bottom rack. Second, you really should use a mandoline slicer or food processor to slice your sweet potato because if the slices aren’t uniform in size, you’ll have some start to burn while others are still soft. And if you use a knife, you won’t be able to get thin crispy chips unless your knife skills are far better than mine (which, okay, I’m sure they are–a chimpanzee probably has better knife skills than I do).

Other than that, this recipe is easy as can be and the results will amaze you–delicious, garlicky and perfectly crispy baked sweet potato chips from your oven! I don’t think I’m going to be buying these at the store ever again.