Sweet Potato Pie? Shut yo mouth!
- thesunnysutton
- Nov 5, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Nov 30, 2020
2 C Cooked Sweet Potato
3/4 C Sugar
1/4 C Butter, softened
1 Egg
1/2 C Sweetened Condensed Milk
2 tsp Vanilla Extract
1/8 tsp Salt
Pinch of Cinnamon
Pinch of Nutmeg
1 - 9” Pie Shell, unbaked
Pre-heat oven to 350.
Blend all sweet potato, sugar, butter, egg, sweetened condensed milk, vanilla extract, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg with a hand mixer until smooth. Pour into unbaked pie shell and smooth the top.
Place the pie on a sheet pan and bake for 45 minutes, or until center is set.
Cool completely, and chill before serving. Store leftovers in the refrigerator.
If you hate pumpkin pie with the same passion that I do, this may just be the holiday pie of your dreams! There’s just something about pumpkin pie that just doesn’t do it for me. There are too many spices, too weird of a texture, and I just plain don’t like it. For a long time, I didn’t like sweet potato pie for those very same reasons! A lot of recipes call for a good bit of spice, usually including at least cinnamon and nutmeg, and sometimes allspice, cloves, or ginger. I think that when you use good ingredients, you want to be able to actually taste the ingredients. Simplicity is a beautiful, tasty thing! I adore sweet potatoes, and eat them on a very regular basis! For this pie, I highly recommend taking the time to bake the sweet potatoes in the oven until they’re lovely and roasty and a little bit caramelized. The flavor payoff is worth it! You can bake them ahead of time and store them in the fridge until you’re ready to peel them and bake your pie. Pro tip: Line your baking sheet with foil before you bake your taters so you don’t have to scrub the goo off of your pan - massive time saver!
Now, let’s talk about how I came across this delightful pie! This recipe is a legitimate blue ribbon winning recipe - I’m not even kidding! In Gilmer, Texas, they hold a festival every year called the Yamboree. It includes your standard fair rides and fair food, but also pie cook offs, a yam queen, a barn dance, and more church lady cooked food than you can possibly hold in a full week’s time! My parents grew up in Gilmer, and as a little, I got dragged to the Yamboree multiple times in my life. When you’re a little kid, you sometimes (read: never) appreciate things like the Yamboree! Fast forward to being an adult. Food themed festivals? Fun! Church lady food? A thing to be savored and its history revered! This pie is definitely a thing of beauty, well worthy of church lady food status!
My bonus dad’s niece is the genius that created this amazing recipe, and there are few recipes that I treasure more! I‘ve never met this lady, but I owe her a hug! Her pie won the blue ribbon in the Yamboree pie cook off, and you’ll see why with just one bite. With just a whisper of spice - a literal small pinch of only two spices - it lets the sweet potato yumminess shine through! There aren’t multiple flavors fighting in your mouth while you’re trying to figure out what to taste. You can serve it with whipped cream (the real stuff, please) or not. Either way is perfection in its own right. If you have access to Mexican vanilla extract, I highly recommend it. It is truly a magical ingredient that you won’t regret investing in!
I’ve shared this recipe with several people over the years, and found out that it makes an appearance at several of my friends’ family Thanksgiving gatherings annually. It would be a disservice for me to not tell you how great this is for breakfast! I’ve honestly stood over the kitchen sink eating a slice the morning after Thanksgiving on more than one occasion. It’s that good. You can absolutely make a pie crust from scratch if you like. I cheat and use frozen ones for this recipe. It comes together very quickly and is only a trillion times more delicious than pumpkin pie!
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