A Guest Post: And She Brought Pie!

Hello!  I invited Jen B. from My Adorable Small Town Life to come on over and do a guest post.  She is a smart, funny Amazon, and if you haven't checked out her blog before, I think you should.
She, like me, enjoys a good meal, and for this guest post, she decided to try making a sweet potato pie.  I've never made a sweet potato pie, so I was excited to see how it turned out!
-Tasha

I first heard about sweet potato pie from The X-Files, in: "Jose Chung's From Outer Space". In that episode, Mulder sits in a diner and orders piece after piece of delicious pie. That is one of the many X-Files episodes that stuck with me (Alex Trebek is in it!) and the pie stuck with me too. At the time I had no idea what sweet potato pie was, but I knew the X-Phile in me would one day have to try it.

I looked through dozens of recipes, Googling: "best sweet potato pie" and "authentic sweet potato pie" and after a lot of deliberation I decided to trust Joy the Baker's recipe as my first taste of this delicious dessert. I picked a good one, as this is one fabulous pie.

Ingredients: (adapted from Joy the Baker)
9" deep dish pie shell
2 cups mashed sweet potato (about 3 small sweet potatoes, or 1.5lbs)
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 1/4 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
1 1/4 cup evaporated milk, divided (each half is 1/2 cup + 2 tbsps)
1/3 cup granulated sugar
3 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla

Method: 1. Peel and cube sweet potatoes and place in steamer pot. Steam until soft and then mash them. 

2. Add mashed sweet potatoes to a medium pot. Add brown sugar, spices, butter, and half of the evaporated milk and stir and warm over low heat to combine.

3. Use an immersion blender to get mixture really smooth. I used a hand mixer and may or may not have melted some of the electrical cord on the burner. If using a blending appliance near a burner, keep your eye on the cord and be careful!

4. After simmering for about 5 minutes, remove sweet potato mixture from stove and set aside. In a bowl, whisk together the rest of the evaporated milk, eggs, vanilla, and granulated sugar.

5. Add the egg mixture to the warm sweet potato mixture.

6. Pour into pie shell.

*Note: this recipe makes about 1/2 a cup too much filling for a 9 inch, deep dish pie shell. When following this recipe, you might want to have some tart shells on hand to use up the extra. Or you could do what I did, which was overfill the pie to the point that it dripped out over all the sides. The baking process did make the edges of the pie taste amazing, so that was a bonus.*

7. Bake at 375°F for 15 minutes. Turn oven down to 325°F and bake for an additional 45 minutes. According to the recipe, the pie is done when it only has a light, structured jiggle in the center. My pie had no jiggle at all (which looked good to me!) and a knife inserted in it came out clean.

8. Cool on counter for an hour then place in fridge until completely cool. Enjoy!!

I have to say this pie was absolutely delicious. It is a lot like pumpkin pie in texture and somewhat in taste, but it has a really beautiful sweetness that is completely its own. I didn't put whipped cream on my piece (an absolute must for pumpkin pie and me), as it was really just perfect by itself. I loved it and will definitely be making this pie again.

Have you tried sweet potato pie? What do you think?

Also, feel free to check out more of my blog: My Adorable Small Town Life
And/or follow me on Twitter: Jen B: @myadorableblog