Sweet potato latkes revisited

I wish I had written down what I did for my sweet potato latkes, as they were a smashing success this year. Alas, I failed to do it at the time, so the best I can do is try to remember a few points about what worked.

• Use olive oil. It tasted immeasurably better than the canola stuff you usually get. Light olive oil is available in big jugs on the cheap (I got a 38 oz monster for $10.99) and that's more than enough to get you through a lot of latkes. Note that olive oil has a lower smoke point than canola oil, so watch the heat or you'll be scrubbing.
• Use one egg and at least three tbsp. flour for every pound of sweet potatoes. You may need even more flour than that. I found that with this much egg and flour kicking around, I didn't have nearly as much trouble getting them to hold together.
• Sweet potatoes don't cast off nearly as much water as regular potatoes do, but they are also less starchy and therefore don't want to stick together.
• Lots of onion. Maybe one medium onion for every 1.5-2 sweet potatoes.I was hesitant to use a lot of onion at first--they're sweet potatoes, after all!--but they really added a fantastic dimension that played right off the olive oil in spectacular fashion. With less onion, the taste was a bit sweet and insipid.
• Careful with the salt. I used the guidelines for normal latkes (about 1/2 tsp. per pound) and it seemed like a lot.

I can't remember if I used any baking soda in the sweets. Too bad; otherwise I'd write up a guestimate of the recipe.

I'm very interested in shredding one beet and tossing that in with the sweet potatoes next year. It would add a lot of pizazz.