Twice Baked Potatoes

For Christmas dinner I made a roast beef dinner with carrots and onions cooked in the slow cooker http://thestimpsonsoupkitchen.blogspot.com/2010/11/slow-cooker-roast-beef-with-carrots.htmlwith the beef, my braised red cabbage http://thestimpsonsoupkitchen.blogspot.com/2009/10/braised-red-cabbage.html, and these twice baked potatoes.  Traditionally these potatoes are very high in calories and quite rich.  Since neither India nor Greg eat cow's milk products, and nobody needs the extra calories, I lightened them up by using goat yogurt!  The result was delicious and unfortunately I didn't think to take a photo before we devoured them, so I have used a photo that I found online to give you an idea of what they looked like!

TWICE BAKED POTATOES

Ingredients:

 4 large baking potatoes

1 cup plain goat yogurt (or Greek-style yogurt)

1/2 cup milk*

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

8 green onions, thinly sliced

8 rashers of bacon, cooked and crumbled

1 cup grated Cheddar cheese

• Preheat oven to 450F.  Using a fork, prick the skin on one side of each potato.  Place the potatoes on the top oven rack, and bake for 1 hour.
•  Remove from oven and cut each potato in half, lengthwise.  Using a spoon (I use a grapefruit spoon as it has small serrations along the edge, and makes this job much easier!), scoop out the inside flesh of each potato half, ensuring that you leave a 1 cm border of unscooped potato so the skin doesn't collapse.
• Place the potato flesh into a large mixing bowl and coarsely mash with a potato masher.  Add the green onions, goat yogurt, milk, salt and pepper.  Stir till well combined.
• Stuff each potato skin half with the mashed potato and place on a rimmed baking sheet. 
• Top each potato with the crumbled bacon and grated cheese**, and place back into the oven to bake for another 15 minutes, or until the tops are browned and the cheese melted.
• Serve & ENJOY!

*I replaced regular 2% milk with almond milk.
**Since my Dad is a vegetarian and Greg and India don't eat cow's milk, I left off the bacon and cheese and simply placed them in bowls for people to add to their potato as they wished!