We had lots of sweet potatoes left over from when we went to my grandfather's farm 2 weeks ago. There was a lot of it - one big crate - given by my grandfather and it was so yummy. We had already eaten it in sweet potato fritters and balls, sweet potato soup and just eaten by itself. We didn't know what to do with the remaining few and so we steamed it all. Some ended up being eaten on its own and the rest we decided to make a sweet potato pie.
My mom asked me to make the pie crust as it would make it easier for her. I chose the easiest recipe from google. You can find it here.
First I took out the butter, measured it and weighed it. I sifted flour and added salt to the flour. Then I combined it with the butter to form crumbly bits. Then comes the fun part where I added cold water a little at a time and used a spoon to stir it into a dough. It was a soft dough so I had to be careful not to warm it up too much with my hands. I didn't end up using all the water. I formed a ball with the dough and wrapped it with cling film and put it in the fridge to chill.
While the dough was chilling,
I made the pie filling. You can see the recipe here. I mashed up the steamed sweet potato first. It was soft and easy to mash. Then I creamed together some butter and brown sugar. (We reduced the butter to 50g and sugar to 1/4 cup s it would not be so rich). Then to it I added eggs and stirred well. Then I added milk, the mashed sweet potato, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla extract. It looked like a lumpy mess but it would turn out alright. I left it to sit until the dough had chilled.
I actually preferred cubed sweet potato for the filling for the pie, not mashed. I like to eat chunks of the potato. However my mom reassured me it would be nice, kind of like a custardy filling. After the dough was chilled for a few hours, I took it out and my mom rolled it with the rolling pin into a flat sheet and lined the pie dish with the dough. It seems very difficult to do but my mom has a lot of experience. After that we poured in the filling and smoothed it out to flatten the top.
After that was done, we baked the pie for 15 minutes on high heat, then 35 minutes on medium heat. I just followed what the recipe said. Soon the room was filled with the delicious aroma from the pie. I was hoping it would turn out not too sweet, or not too rich. And was aiming for more chunky sweet potato bits. In the end, I was not disappointed. The pie turned out very natural tasting and I could taste the sweet potato. We topped the pie with some vanilla ice cream. With the hot pie and the cold ice cream it tasted great. The simple crust turned out great and I was very happy with it.
Here is the finished product. It was a sweet and slightly savoury pie... delicious with ice cream! I was glad we chose to make this pie!
Labels: baking, desserts, pie, sweet potato
