There's no lack of controversy about Thanksgiving sweet potatoes (marshmallows -- curse or blessing?), but most people agree they should be on the table in some form.

Popular though they may be, sweet potatoes are messy and time-consuming to prepare. Once cooked, however, they freeze beautifully. Why not take advantage of this happy circumstance and get your Thanksgiving sweet potatoes safely locked away in cold storage?

To prove the point, we're offering three festive freeze-ahead sweet potato recipes for holiday tables. All are for the dark orange-fleshed sweet potatoes often marketed as yams, as opposed to the pale yellow variety. The first and easiest recipe is adapted from a captivating book by Eula Mae Doré, who cooked for decades on Avery Island, La., for the company that makes Tabasco sauce.

Doré writes that sweet potatoes rolled in raw sugar and spices and baked with orange juice and butter was a family staple on the farm where she grew up. We can see why. We loved this dish -- the raw sugar keeps its crunch after baking and the orange juice reduces to a tart-sweet syrup.

Knowing that mashed sweet potatoes are an essential part of the Thanksgiving menu for many, we also mashed a pile of them. Our conclusions: If you bake them first instead of boiling, their flavor is intensified. And, if you puree them in a food processor or put them through an old-fashioned hand-cranked food mill, you get a nice, smooth result. When we mashed them by hand or in an electric mixer, we found noticeable lumps and pesky little fibers.

To satisfy both the sweet and savory camps, we present two variations -- an orange-maple syrup mash and a version spiked with lime juice. Mashed sweet potatoes can be frozen in a casserole suitable for serving or in a freezer container.

Finally, there's a sweet potato puff, which is a cross between mashed sweet potatoes and a sweet potato souffle. Lightened with egg whites, it's baked once before freezing and once after.

What about adapting your own favorite sweet potato casserole to the freezer? If you want to try, here are some tips:

• Sweet potatoes should be cooked before freezing.

• Citrus juice keeps them from darkening in the freezer. If you are freezing sweet potatoes whole or in pieces, you can dip or brush them with orange, lemon or lime juice. For mashed or pureed sweet potatoes, blend in citrus juice to taste.

• When wrapping sweet potatoes for the freezer, protect them by wrapping with a form-fitting layer of plastic wrap covered by foil.

• Thaw in the refrigerator or at room temperature.

• Don't freeze toppings such as nuts or those controversial marshmallows. Add them during the last part of the final baking.