Soul Food Sunday – Southern Sweet Potato Pie
Every holiday I can remember growing up involved a homemade sweet potato pie with lots of cinnamon and nutmeg. No we didn’t eat pumpkin pie – it was sweet potato all the way for our household. Before I moved away from home, there were a handful of dishes that my mom made me master- fried chicken, fried pork chops, grits, and sweet potato pie. How’s that for southern. It was kinda like a rite of passage. This is a slimmed down version of the pie I grew up eating. Mom made it with melted butter but I stopped using that years ago. For a different twist, add a couple tablespoons of molasses.
Things to Remember
- This is the version I make when I have plenty of time. I call it my lazy day pie. I bake the sweet potatoes because I think they retain more flavor than when you boil them. The skins pretty much slide off in your hands if you bake them long enough. If you’re short on time, peel them, chop them into chunks and boil or medium heat until a fork slides into them easily.
- Use a hand mixer if you have one to get everything incorporated and cut down on the lumps. Every time I’ve tried to mix this by hand I end up with big balls of sweet potato floating in my pie.
- Sweetness is a matter of personal preference so I start with a cup of sugar and add more to taste after that. I don’t like my pies to be sickeningly sweet so you may need a little more. After you bake the pie it will taste less sweet than it did raw so be sure to compensate for that.
- Two eggs give this pie a light souffle like texture out of the oven. It will sink somewhat once it cools.
- Poking holes in crust before you par bake it helps keep it bubbling up and crawling down the sides of your pie pan. Par cooking helps insure you don’t get a soggy crust on the bottom.
Southern Sweet Potato Pie
Southern Sweet Potato Pie
Ingredients
- 3 or 4 large cooked and peeled sweet potatoes
- 2 large eggs well beaten
- 1 1/3 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 cup whole milk
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1/2 tsp nutmeg
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 3 tbls melted butter (optional)
- dash of salt
- 1 pie crust (store bought or homemade – I like Pillsbury)
Instructions
- Heat oven to 350.
- Press pie crust into pan and poke holes in the bottom with a fork.Place in preheated oven for 10 minutes.
- While crust is par baking, mash sweet potatoes in a large bowl.Try to get out as many of the lumps as possible.
- Mix in eggs, vanilla, and milk with a hand mixer. Add sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, and butter if using.
- Pour sweet potato mixture into the crust and bake for 40 minutes.
Quick notes
I like to bake my sweet potatoes when I’m making a pie. I place the potatoes in a baking dish and poke each one 4 or 5 times with a fork. cover with foil, and bake at 350 for 1 1/2 hours or until you can slip a knife through the middle with very little resistance. Once baked and cooled, the skins are easy to peel off.
Cooking time: 1 hour(s)
Number of servings (yield): 8
14 Comments
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November 4, 2012[…] Southern Sweet Potato Pie from Soul Food Sunday […]
Mary
March 2, 2013Am making your sweet potato pie and just put it in the oven !
Mary
March 3, 2013Turned out beautifully ! Everybody loved it and it is now my go to Sweetpotato Pie !
Thank you for posting it..absolutely the best!
April
November 21, 2013Sweet Potato Pie is the only thing i ever requested for the holidays! Learned to make on my own by watching the Ladies in the kitchen. Baking the potatoes never occured to me. I usually make my sweet potato pies the way my Mom and Grandma, aunts and great aunts made them. Used condensed sweet milk, very little sugar. I personally use lots of the spices in my pie, like sugar once baked they seem non existant so i kick in a lot more than most. I have never used measuring spoons and cups. Ever. Pies are always perfect!1
susan
December 1, 2013I’m making your sweet potatoe pie.
jfoster
December 2, 2013Let me know how it goes.
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January 23, 2014[…] Southern Sweet Potato Pie courtesy of A Cook at Heart […]
jfoster
April 22, 2014Thanks for the mention.
Rhonda
November 16, 2014I’ve been baking sweet potato pies for years and never thought about actually baking my potatoes versus boiling them…thanks for the tip! Am trying this today; baking pies for teacher/staff luncheon tomorrow:)
I use a recipe very similar to yours. Sometimes I swap out the sweet potatoes for butternut squash…very yummy!
jfoster
December 8, 2014Hi Rhonda. How did it turn out?
BSug
December 22, 2014Can I use heavy cream instead of whole milk for so pie?
jfoster
December 22, 2014I’ve never tried it with heavy cream but I think it would work fine. Let me know how it turns out.
Cyndi
December 4, 2015I need to apologize to you, because I have used your recipe before and forgot to THANK YOU! my mom passed away several years ago, and I of course needed to make sweet potato pies, for one of my students who never tasted a sweet potato pie. So of course I didn’t have my mother’s recipe so I had to go on line and find one, and there was a Soul food Sunday. The pies turned out GREAT! Now I have a student who has never tasted a pumpkin pie, so I thought that I would make him a Sweet Potato Pie. So once again Thank You. If you have a good recipe for home made chicken pot pie, I sure would appreciate that as well.
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March 18, 2018[…] Soul Food Sunday – Southern Sweet Potato Pie […]