Sweet Potato Pie
Sweet Potato Pie
Every year for both Thanksgiving and Christmas I make pies, lots of pies for friends and family. This Christmas I only made 2 pies and lots and lots (and lots) of cookies and loaves. I found this recipe on Joy the Bakers website, she is amazing and has a fantastic cookbook out also. I just had to write about this recipe because a good sweet potato pie has eluded me for many years now. This pie is perfect, the directions are crystal clear and it will be the recipe I use from now on. I used my go to pie crust recipe instead of the one included in the recipe and I just can’t tell you how excited I am that I finally made a sweet potato pie that doesn’t have cracks. You can find the recipe here. Visit Joy’s blog it’s chock full of wonderful recipes, I also plan on getting her cookbook.
I made just a couple of very minor changes,firstly I doubled the recipe, I needed two pies, instead of boiling the sweet potatoes I bake them until they are soft and caramelized and instead of mashing with a potato masher I puree in the food processor. She calls for 2 5 oz cans of evaporated milk. I used one can and 5 oz of heavy cream. I also added only cinnamon because these pies are not for me, I baked them for a friend and thats how she likes it. The method is brilliant, similar to Meta Givens pumpkin pie recipe on Food52, you heat the pureed sweet potato with half the milk, the butter, brown sugar and spices, let it cool and then add to the remaining milk or cream, eggs and vanilla. Bake in a hot oven (450) for 10 minutes then an hour at 325. The resulting pie is perfection. If you are a fan of sweet potato pie you must try this recipe.
apuginthekitchen 
Love sweet potato pie! When i was working I would trade a sweet potato pie for a cheese cake. My employee’s wife would make the pie…I’d make the cheese cake..we were both very happy!
Merry Christmas Pat and thank you. I actually like sweet potato pie more than pumpkin, something about the creaminess that I love.
omg…sounds wonderful…hope u had a great day!
Thanks Dev, it was great.
They are just…perfect! Happy Holidays! 🙂
Thanks so much Francesca, I was so pleased to finally find a recipe that yielded such a nice pie. Happy New Year!
Your pies look magnificently perfect. I love sweet potato pie and these are superb. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas 🙂
Thanks Judy, I hope you had a great Christmas and all the best for you and your family in 2013!
I missed this post since I was so busy Christmas Eve! Your pies look delicious and beautiful! You know I absolutely love sweet potato, but never had sweet potato pie!!
Thank you, I also love sweet potatoes, before my friend requested one I had never taste a sweet potato pie. They are really good!
Oh my goodness your pie crust is perfect! Sweet potato pie is next on my list looks great! ~ nerdwithtaste.wordpress.com
Thank you so much, the pie crust is a never fail Julia Child recipe. It’s always flaky and delicious. I hope you give it a try. Can’t go wrong with Joy the Baker either.
The best sweet potato pie I have ever had was in Sacramento, California. Gloria, who cooks the best in everything she makes, whipped up the simplest looking pie. I was reluctant to eat it but did out of courtesy…OMGoodness! That is one of the best eating days of my life. The pie was out of this world. And although I never got the recipe I have tried to recreate it many times. This is as close as I have come…although not perfect.
For years I made a recipe that is similar but doesn’t use evaporated milk just calls for whole milk, I always sub heavy cream and half and half for the milk, everything is mixed with an electric mixer and then baked at 325 the recipe say’s for 45 minutes but it never took 45 minutes it sometimes took an hour or more and it always cracked, I loved the taste of this pie but in my opinion the recipe was flawed. When I saw Joy the Bakers recipe I immediately wanted to try it and it did come out perfectly but next time I make it I am not going to use evaporated milk, I’ll stick to heavy cream and half and half. It’s always a quest when you taste something you love and trying to recreate is elusive. This is a really nice recipe I must say. Thanks so much for the comment.
My husband and I absolutely loved this pie!!!!! I made two of them for Thanksgiving using five sweet potatoes. I did change the recipe a bit from reading other reviewers comments. First I baked the sweet potatoes for an hour and fifteen minutes at 375 degrees. After peeling them I mashed them with a fork and creamed them in a food processor, which made them really smooth and took out all of the lumps. I used 1/4 teaspoon of allspice, nutmeg, and ginger. I used 1/8 teaspoon of cinnamon. Instead of the evaporated milk I used 1/2 cup of condensed milk, 1/2 cup of white sugar, 3/4 cups of brown sugar, and 2 and a half teaspoons of vanilla. For the whipped topping I only changed the 1/4 cup of confectioners sugar to 1/8 of a cup. I also put the pies in a graham cracker crust. But you can taste as you go to make sure its sweet enough to your liking.
It is such a wonderful recipe and I your pie sounds great. I also baked the sweet potatoes, I think they taste better that way and did a few other minor changes, it is a very forgiving recipe. I love the idea of using a graham cracker crust.