Imagine this – it’s the tail end of October, your yard is covered in orange leaves and surrounded by red and yellow trees, and your house smells like sweet potatoes and cinnamon.
Sounds nice, huh?
Well, what are you waiting for? Go pick up some sweet potatoes and let’s make that a reality!
This morning, I felt the undeniable urge to bake a pie. And not just any pie, mind you, but a pie that I’d never baked before. Sam’s Club had a sale on sweet potatoes last week so I’d picked up a large bag thinking that hubby was far less picky. Well, when I stumbled across a recipe online for sweet potato pie, I thought, “What a great way to use some of these sweet potatoes!”
Then I made the mistake of running the idea by hubby. We had a problem…
“I hate sweet potatoes.” The bold and italics don’t do that emphasis justice. He proceeded to list every way that sweet potatoes could be prepared followed by, “Hate it.” Baked sweet potatoes, sweet potato fries, sweet potatoes with marshmallows…
Well, I didn’t want to tackle an entire bag of sweet potatoes alone and my heart was set on the pie so I just had to bake it and hope for the best. I prepared the crust in a bowl and started the potatoes boiling only to discover that we still hadn’t purchased a pie tin. Not to be so easily thwarted, I busted out the muffin pan. You may remember the delicious mini-pumpkin-pies I made last week. How different could these be?
Turns out, not very!
Now, I just had to bake my mini sweet potato pies and hope that the reviews were true. AllRecipes members raved that this pie was “very sweet” and “the best sweet potato pie [they've] ever had…” One even said that it didn’t taste like sweet potatoes at all.
Well, they were wrong about that point. My mini pies definitely taste like they are made of sweet potatoes. But for a sweet potato aficionado such as myself, that’s a good thing! The house smells wonderful – almost like thanksgiving dessert. The cinnamon scent makes the house feel very warm and festive. Surely, hubby will appreciate that when he gets home from hunting tonight, right?
Whether he enjoys these pies or not, I liked them so much that I had one extra portion!
I should note that this is definitely a dessert dish and there is a lot of sugar in each portion. My slight stomach ache now will attest to that. ;) So go easy on your portion and don’t overindulge!
And I admit that these would have turned out a lot cuter if I’d had a little more foresight and a little less willpower and had picked up some whipped cream and glazed pecans at the store. But instead of lamenting an alright photo that could have potentially been pretty good, I’m just going to enjoy my sweet potato mini pie, thank the calorie fairy that this treat was not adorned with a delicious white cloud of cream, and blog about it for a bit.
The recipe is below! The easiest pie I’ve ever made next to pumpkin. If you decide to give the mini version a go, reduce the baking time to 35 minutes and be VERY generous with the Pam if you ever want to pop these bad boys out of the tin… ;)
Sweet Potato Pie
Ingredients
- (1 pound) sweet potato
- 1/2 cup butter, softened
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1/2 cup milk
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 (9 inch) unbaked pie crust
- Boil sweet potato whole in skin for 40 to 50 minutes, or until done. Run cold water over the sweet potato, and remove the skin.
- Break apart sweet potato in a bowl. Add butter, and mix well with mixer. Stir in sugar, milk, eggs, nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla. Beat on medium speed until mixture is smooth. Pour filling into an unbaked pie crust.
- Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 55 to 60 minutes, or until knife inserted in center comes out clean. Pie will puff up like a souffle, and then will sink down as it cools.