My new quest to use up ingredients in my pantry continues with three purple sweet potatoes left over from making Hallowe’en Scream Bread! I needed to use them up before they went bad, and I wanted to use them all in one recipe. But which one? This Sweet Potato Pie with Pecan Crust wasn’t the only purple sweet potato recipe I found, but it sounded too good to pass up. I know, I just made White Pumpkin Pie three times to get the crust right, so how can I make another pie this soon? Because pecan shortbread cookie crust filled with a custardy spiced purple sweet potato filling with a pop of bourbon whiskey. Need I say more?
This silky spiced sweet potato pie with a nutty crunchy pecan crust is my favorite southern sweet potato pie recipe. Although this doesn’t look like a classic sweet potato pie because it’s made with purple sweet potatoes, all the classic flavours are still very much in there. It’s made with roasted sweet potatoes, butter, milk, eggs, brown sugar, and all the delicious warming spices that go into a classic.
The Ingredients
This recipe calls for four small purple sweet potatoes weighing 2 to 2 1/2 pounds. I only had 3, and they weighed in collectively at 2 pounds 3 ounces. I also had some leftover purple sweet potato puree from the Halloween swirl bread I mentioned earlier. I’m glad I popped it in the freezer instead of tossing it!
I did a quick pantry and fridge search to see what other ingredients I had. It turned out to be quite a few. I had the spices, all-purpose flour, brown sugar (I used light, but dark would work too), and vanilla extract.
I had to pick up the pecans, unsalted butter, eggs, and whipping cream (I bought extra for an optional garnish). Surprisingly, I didn’t have bourbon since hubby and I rarely drink anymore. I picked up a small bottle of Bulleit right before I hit the grocery store.
Somehow, I missed the turbinado sugar and didn’t notice until I started baking. I was so sure I had some, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. It was listed as optional, so I considered skipping it. Then I discovered some demerara sugar shoved to the back of a shelf in my pantry. It’s very similar to turbinado, and they are often used interchangeably. And I got to use up something else from my pantry, so yay!
The Process
Like all pies, I had to start with the dough for the crust. I like to make it at least a day ahead of time so it can chill for at least 24 hours. This one was made just like any other food processor dough. The only difference was processing the pecans first.
Tip: I noticed this recipe calls for pecan halves, But chopped pecans (a.k.a. pecan pieces) would work just as well and are usually a little cheaper. The only minor downside is not having a pecan half to use as a garnish, but a sprinkle of cinnamon works just as well.
Everything went smoothly until I added the ice water. The recipe reads “2 ounces (2 tbsp)”. I took it to mean 2 ounces of water is the same as 2 tablespoons, but that’s incorrect. Two ounces is 4 tablespoons.
I was unsure, so I began with 2 tablespoons of ice water. The crust didn’t come together, so I added 2 more tablespoons of water. The mixture looked a bit crumbly, but I turned it out onto a cutting board and tried shaping it into a cohesive disk. It worked, although it seemed dry. I trusted the process, though, and placed the wrapped dough into my refrigerator to chill overnight.
Making the Crust (The next day)
Two hours to bake the sweet potatoes and let them cool gave me plenty of time to turn the dough into an actual pie crust. I grabbed the dough from the fridge and started rolling it out on a floured silicone pastry mat. Just as I feared, it was too dry. The dough crumbled instead of rolling into a smooth sheet.
Fortunately, this was an easy fix. I put the dough into a large mixing bowl and added more ice water 1 tablespoon at a time. I used a pastry cutter to work it into the dough, and I was happy with the texture after adding 3 extra tablespoons of ice water.
You might wonder why I didn’t use my food processor, and I have a good reason: heat from friction. The dough needs to be cold when it’s rolled out, and I didn’t want to wait for it to chill overnight again. I used a pastry cutter because it created less friction and, therefore less heat. I did reshape it into a disk and refrigerate it for 20 minutes, though, so it would be cold.
It was still a little dryer than typical pie crust dough, but it held together when I draped it over the pie pan. Next, I trimmed the excess, folded the edges under, and used a fork to make a simple crimp. Not the prettiest edge, but I wanted to try something different. I placed the newly made crust into the freezer for 20 minutes. The recipe says to refrigerate, but I find freezing works better.
Blind Baking the Crust
Personally, I’m a fan of blind baking. It makes the bottom of the crust crispier and less soggy. I used 2 pieces of pre-cut parchment sheets and 2 packages of pie weights to get the job done. But I have to say I love that the recipe gives options that are more readily available like beans, rice, or sugar. I’ve never heard of the last one, but I’ll take the author’s word for it.
When the crust was done, I used the corners of the parchment paper to lift out the pie weights. I learned the hard way not to tilt the pie pan and our them out because the crust will pour too.
Tip: A cast-iron skillet or ceramic baking dish is the perfect receptacle for hot pie weights since they are heatproof. Any dish that can go into the oven or microwave and is about as large as the pie pan will work.
The next step was brushing on egg wash and sprinkling sugar on the crust edges. This is optional, but I love how caramelized sugar looks and tastes. I didn’t do this step right away, though, and waited to do it immediately before pouring in the filling. I didn’t want the crust to sit there too long, absorb the egg wash, and get soggy.
Tip: Egg-only egg wash can be thick, goopy, and messy. Adding 1 tablespoon of water, milk, or cream to a beaten egg makes the egg wash a little thinner and easier to work with. This type of egg wash is great for adhering sugar and makes pastries bake up golden brown with a bit of a sheen.
Making the Purple Sweet Potato Filling
Like the Hallowe’en Scream Bread!, I had to make purple sweet potato puree. That recipe used boiled sweet potatoes, but this one used baked/roasted potatoes. Boiling adds moisture to the potatoes, and that could have kept the filling from setting properly. Good to know!
Roasting them was actually easier than boiling since I didn’t have to peel and chop them. NGL, I thought about microwaving them for a second. I’m a microwaved baked potato kind of person since it’s so much faster, but I stuck to the recipe. I placed 3 purple sweet potatoes onto a parchment-lined sheet pan, pierced them with a fork, and let the oven do its thing while I worked on the crust. Super easy! They were nice and soft after an hour, so I sliced them open and gave them another hour to cool on the counter.
The sweet potatoes were still warm but were cool enough to handle safely. I used a spoon to scoop out as much of the flesh as possible. Much to my surprise, I had more than the 2 cups needed for this recipe. I didn’t need to use my backup frozen purple sweet potato puree. Instead, I combined it with the extra roasted sweet potatoes and popped them back into my freezer to hopefully use for something else.
The sweet potatoes didn’t need to be pureed first like it did in my Halloween bread. This recipe kept it easy and had me add all the filling ingredients to the food processor and puree them all at once. I let the food processor work for a few minutes so the filling would be perfectly smooth. No lumpy sweet potato pies here!
Filling & Baking My Purple Sweet Potato Pie
Now that the crust was blind-baked and the filling was pureed, it was time to assemble my purple sweet potato pie. I had made the egg wash while the filling was pureed in my food processor. It only took a few moments to brush it onto the crust then sprinkle it with a little demerara sugar. I got some inside the pie crust, but it wasn’t much and I ignored it.
All that was left to do was pour in the filling and bake. I placed the pie pan onto a sheet pan so I wouldn’t mess up the crust when I moved the pie in and out of the oven.
Tip: I used a thin silicone trivet under the pie pan to keep it from sliding around. Silicone baking sheets work too.
I checked the pie at 35 minutes, and it still needed some time to set. It was perfectly done after 45 minutes. The edges looked a little puffy, but the center was still a little jiggly. I gave it 2 hours to cool on the counter, then I refrigerated my newly made purple sweet potato pie overnight so it could firm up before slicing.
Timing
This recipe listed prep, bake, and inactive times, with a total fo 6 hours. Using the times listed in the instructions, I broke that down as:
- 30 minutes to prep
- 1 hour 50 minutes to bake (potatoes & pie)
- 1 hour 20 minutes to chill (dough and crust)
- 2 hours 20 minutes to cool (baked potatoes & pie)
- 6 hours total
Here’s how my time was spent on my purple sweet potato pie:
- 10 minutes to make dough
- 1 hour to chill dough*
- 2 hours to bake and cool potatoes
- 4 minutes to begin rolling out dough
- 3 minutes to fix dry dough
- 20 minutes to re-chill dough
- 20 minutes to roll out dough & make pie crust
- 20 minutes to chill pie crust
- 7 minutes to scoop and measure potatoes (made while crust chilled)
- 6 minutes to make filling
- 8 minutes to blind bake crust
- 4 minutes to add sugar to edges and fill crust
- 45 minutes to bake pie
- 2 hours to cool pie on counter
- chill pie overnight (not included in total)
- 5 hours 20 minutes total
*I made the dough the day before and chilled it overnight, but I’m using the minimum time listed in the recipe for my time rating because it looks like that’s what the author did to calculate the total time.
Making the crust while the potatoes baked and cooled kept my time under the time listed. I was a little surprised since I had to make that emergency crust fix, but I’m not gonna argue with it. It was time well spent!
