Sweet Potato Pie

Today I dove right in and made a sweet potato pie...before checking to make sure I had all the ingredients.

It looks good:

I tried it this evening and it was scrumdiddallyumptious. Everyone liked it except Yahaira. Go figure.

As I said earlier, I dove right in before checking to make sure I had all the necessary ingredients, which it turns out I did not. I was missing butter, heavy cream, pecans and extra cinnamon.

Well, I'm not a girl to be held back by lacking something. Nor am I one to stick to a recipe most of the time. Since I already had started mixing what ingredients I had (before realizing I was missing some) I just kept on rolling along. Daniel offered to go to the store to buy the MIA ingredients, but stubborn ol' me said, "Oh no you don't." I figured I could use half yogurt/half milk for the heavy cream, organic canola oil in place of the butter and a streusel topping without pecans and the streusel just had to make do without cinnamon. The crust probably should have had coconut oil instead of the canola oil as a butter replacement, but it still worked out to fulfill its purpose (just a little bland).

Sweet Potato Pie

crust:

1 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (or white wheat flour)

1  tablespoon sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup cold unsalted butter cut into cubes (or 1/4 cup oil in my case)

3  tablespoons very cold water

1. Stir together flour sugar and salt.

2. Cut the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles coarse cornmeal

3. Add the water and mix with a fork until the dough pulls together

4. Transfer to a work surface and form into a ball

5. Flatten and roll out into a 12 inch diameter round crust

6. Refrigerate until firm (30 minutes)

7. Preheat the oven to 375 F. Place the rack on the lower 1/3rd of the oven.

8. Partially bake the pie crust (I just popped it in the oven and let it bake for 5 minutes or so before I added the filling to it...to truly partially bake takes more work and time than that).

filling:

1  cup cooked sweet potato pureed (or mashed with a fork)

3/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

2  large eggs

1  teaspoon ground cinnamon

1  teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground allspice

1 1/4 cups heavy cream (or 3/4 cup yogurt and 1/2 cup almond milk)

1. Reduce the oven to 350 F.

2. Mix the brown sugar, salt, eggs, cinnamon, ginger and allspice together.

3. Stir in the sweet potato puree and heavy cream.

4. Mix until smooth.

5. Pour into the partially baked pie crust.

6. Bake until the filling is firm (20 minutes)

7. Top with the streusel and continue to bake until the center is firm (20-25 more minutes)

streusel top:
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 oz (a little less than 1/4 cup) flour
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
2  teaspoons ground cinnamon (if you have some left)
1/4 cup cold unsalted butter (or 1 heaping tablespoon coconut oil)

1. Mix together brown sugar, flour, sugar and cinnamon.
2. Add the butter (or oil) and mix until it resembles cookie crumbs.
3. Top the partially baked pie and finish baking.