Caramelized Sweet Potato

This is not one of my usual dishes because I don't usually like to play around with sugar (and hence rarely bake) but I was feeling nostalgic. When I lived with my grandmother, she had quite a sweet teeth and loved to make caramelized sweet potato. I knew it was going to be a pain, because 1) caramelized sugar is finnicky, 2) my grandma had a hit or miss experience with the recipe and 3) I could not find a suitable recipe online. Thus, this was a true experiment, based on my memories from when I was a toddler. Although I don't remember much of the cooking process (besides the fact that, like most Chinese dishes, it was cooked on a stove and not in the oven), I do remember the finished product. When done just right, the sugar would coat each sweet potato chunk, and when you tried to grab one, a long trail of caramelized sugar would follow. Mm..sweet childhood memories.
So first I baked the sweet potato at 400F until I could easily run a sharp knife through a piece, about 20 minutes. 

I then melted some sugar on the stove, and quickly tossed in some potato chunks. 

Well, the last batch looked the best. I did not recreate the stringy-sugar effect and there are clumps of sugar everywhere but it tasted like how I imagined it would. I don't know how to get the sugar to perfectly coat each chunk and for all the chunks to stick together in one perfect sugar-potato conglomeration. There seems like so many variables to this, such as how much oil to roast the potatoes with, the temperature of the sugar, and the perfect sugar to potato ratio. Well the dish needs a lot of work but I probably won't be reattempting this anytime soon-my teeth are hurting from all the sugar.