Sweet Potato Pie Recipie

Its time to come clean.  I dug up an old email I sent to my riding bud Loyd a year or two ago sharing Frump's Secret Sweet Potato Pie recipe   Many people believe pumpkin potato pie is the traditional North American pie, I care to differ with them.  Sweet potato pie is "the" quintessential American pie.  I support the contention that the rather bland and boring pumpkin pie arrived on the American culinary scene long after sweet potato pie.  The cultivation and consumption of sweet potatoes in the Americas can traced back to before the Mayan and Polynesian cultures.  Some experts even believe that dinosaurs were eating sweet potatoes as far back as the late Jurassic age.

You can bake sweet potato pie in an open flour crust, but there is a tradition of cooking it in cast iron pots without a crust.  I sometimes use a crust, but I often just use a large glass pan (I don't own a cast iron pot).  The best part of sweet potato pie is that its an easy pie to make from scratch and its also pretty healthy, at least until you add sugar, butter, salt, and cream, and then bake it.  

I integrated a lot recipes and ideas over the last several years trying to figure sweet potato pie out.  I think I finally really nailed it with these directions.  Whether you follow my recipe or change it, please keep one thing in mind. I have strong sentiments about mixing marshmallows with pie - its an abomination.  Marshmallows are disgusting and have no business being anywhere near any kind of pie.  Please don't adulterate my recipe by involving marshmallows with it.  If you have a compelling need to walk on the dark side and ignore my wishes here, then please keep my name out it.

Frump's Sweet Potato Pie Recipe:

Ingredients

• 7 average sized sweet potatoes
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/2 cup butter
• 3 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 cup maple syrup
• 2 tablespoons heavy cream (or skim milk in my case)

Topping

• 1/4 cup butter, softened, not melted
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease a baking dish.
2. Rinse and clean up sweet potato's.  You don't have to clean them up perfectly, just get the dirt off.
3. Rub the potatoes in light coating of veggie oil and then bake for about 1 hour in the preheated oven, or until they soften. Poke them to determine if they are getting soft.  Cool for a few minutes, then pull the skins off and mash in a large bowl.  Throw peelings away.
4. In large bowl, mix the mashed sweet potatoes, salt, 1/2 cup butter, eggs, vanilla extract, cinnamon, syrup, and cream/milk. I used a hand blender on slow speed for this.  Blend slowly until most of the lumps are gone.  You can then prepare this portion in advance and then set the concoction aside in a sealed container for a day or two if necessary.
5. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease a baking dish large enough to hold, leaving a little space for topping. Transfer concoction from step #4 into the baking dish and cook til nearly done (about 1 hour in my case, you have to poke it with a tooth pick to check).  The pie will turn brown on top and the edges when its nearly done.  
6. In a medium bowl, combine 1/4 cup butter, flour, brown sugar, and chopped pecans. Mix with a pastry blender or your fingers to the consistency of course meal. Sprinkle over the sweet potato mixture.
7. Bake for another 5 minutes or so, until topping is crisp and lightly browned.

Note: If you use pie crusts, you will need 2 of them for this recipe.

There you go pie freaks.