October 27, 2010

Found It! Recipe for the Perfect Sweet Potato Pie

I love sweet potato pie. I like it way better than pumpkin pie, and it's probably my favorite way to eat sweet potatoes. When we first harvested our sweet potatoes, I made a pie. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the recipe I used years ago and since it's not a common recipe in cookbooks, I picked one off the internet.

That pie was disappointing. At first, I thought it was the variety of sweet potatoes I'd grown, Porto Rico. In fact, I decided that I would look at the bright side of my Sweet Potato Disappointment, as an opportunity to try a different variety next year. Still, I figured I could search out a good pie recipe using the remains of this year's crop, because we do like pie. I decided to keep trying different recipes until I hit on the right one.


That didn't take long. My second pie was perfect. Well, the taste was, because my pie wasn't exceptionally photogenic. No cookbook awards for looks, but the pie is a blue ribbon winner in my cookbook.

The recipe is one I adapted from my own recipe collection, one for pumpkin pie. It worked very well for sweet potatoes. I should mention to that it uses honey instead of sugar, and is dairy free. And of course you can substitute flours and fats according to personal preferences.

Sweet Potato Honey Pie
Crust:

1 & 1/3 cups unbleached white flour
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 C organic palm shortening
1 egg plus enough cold water to = 1/4 C (or enough to get desired consistency)

Cut shortening into flour and salt mixture. Beat egg into water and add to flour mixture. Mix with a fork (not hands) until moist. Roll out between sheets of vegetable oil sprayed waxed paper, and place in pie pan.

Filling:

2 C sweet potato puree
3/4 C honey
3 eggs, beaten
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cloves
1/4 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp sea salt

Mix puree, honey, & eggs. Add remaining ingredients and blend well. Pour into unbaked pie shell. Bake for 10 mins in oven preheated to 425° F. Turn down to 350 and bake another 30 minutes or until an inserted knife comes out clean.  Cool. Can be served with whipped cream if you wish.

As I mentioned, this was originally a pumpkin recipe, so that's another option for filling, as would be any winter squash. It is sweeter with sweet potatoes and some squashes, but the honey could be adjusted to taste if desired.

I also have to thank you all for suggestions on how to use my canned sweet potatoes. I thought it was interesting that the top mentioned SP favorite, was fries, followed by pecan topped casserole. I'm going to try some fries with the sweet potatoes I didn't have to can. With those, I'll try muffins, biscuits, cookies, pancakes, breads, and of course, make plenty of pies.

October 2010 by Leigh at http://www.5acresandadream.com/

8 comments:

Mama Pea said...

Hunh. Very interesting that the recipe has no milk of any sort in it. Hunh. Sure looks like it has great consistency. Wonder why all the pumpkin pie recipes call for milk?

Alla said...

This sounds yummy! I like sweet potatoes also. My daughter has to be dairy free so I'm going to share this recipe with her. I have used my pumpkin bread recipe and used sweet potatoes instead and added dried cranberries for another way to use sweet potatoes. Really good.

Leigh said...

Mama Pea, I've always wondered the same thing about the milk. The first year I canned pumpkin, I realized that it was more liquidy than commercially canned puree, so I started omitting the milk then. With this recipe, the honey adds some of the liquid. The filling for this pie is thicker than most, but it works. The texture is as good as the flavor.

Alla, I'll definitely have to try sweet potato cranberry bread. It sounds yummy. I have a big bag of dried cranberries in my freezer. I just love them. Hopefully I'll get one of those American bush cranberries to plant next year and start drying my own.

Anonymous said...

Love pumpkin (or squash which I have always used) pies. I make a chiffon type pie and this year tried it using coconut milk for a dairy free version. It was delicious. It would probably work with the baked version as well.

Anonymous said...

Yummy! Hugs!

Leigh said...

Evelyn, coconut milk sounds really good! Actually, I think it would be delicious in any baked product.

Pam thanks!

Antonio said...

Potato pie ?
That must be the...uhm, the most unusual pie I ever heard of. Where I live pie is more of a desert than a dish, but I'll definitely try making this one if I get my hands on a sack of good potatoes :)

Leigh said...

Antonio, just make sure you use sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) rather than white potatoes, (Solanum tuberosum). Those are very tasty though, in meat pies.