Our New Sweet Potato Classic

This is so good! Every time I've made it, desert has been left untouched.

Seriously!

I've never really gone for the classic sweet potatoes with marshmallow on top at Thanksgiving, but Scoob loves sweet potatoes so I'll usually make sure it gets on the table. This last Thanksgiving, however, I decided to try something different and now we'll never go back to the marshmallow-topped stuff again!

I've been tweaking the recipe and feeling a bit like Goldilocks.

When I made it at Thanksgiving it was too runny and cloyingly sweet, so I added more sweet potatoes; at Christmas the filling was not quite sweet enough, so I cut back on sweet potatoes; and for Valentine's the filling was just right, but the topping seemed a little too sweet still, so I'm cutting back on some brown sugar with this version.

Scoob has requested another turkey dinner for his birthday (Saturday), so I'll give this a go then, but I think it will be just right.

Our very favoritest sweet potato recipe.

New Sweet Potato Classic

Prep time: 20 minutes
Total time: 1 hour 15 minutes

INGREDIENTS
Filling

4–5 medium sweet potatoes

¼ tsp salt

3 Tbsps all-purpose flour

¼ cup butter

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

½ tsp ground cinnamon

½ cup white sugar

2 Tbsps heavy cream

Topping

¼ cup butter, softened

3 Tbsps all-purpose flour

½ cup packed light brown sugar

½ cup chopped pecans

DIRECTIONS
Filling

1. Preheat oven to 350, line a baking sheet with foil and lightly spray with cooking spray. Cut the sweet potatoes in half lengthwise and place cut-side down on the foil. Bake for about 35 minutes, or until they begin to soften. Remove from oven and allow the potatoes to cool enough so you can handle them.


2. Peel the potatoes (the skins should slide right off) and place in a large bowl. Add the salt, flour, butter, eggs, vanilla, cinnamon, white sugar, and heavy cream and mash until smooth. Transfer to an 8 x 8 baking dish.

Topping

1. In a medium bowl, combine softened butter, flour, brown sugar, and chopped pecans. Mix with a pastry blender until crumbly. Sprinkle over sweet potato mixture.


2. Bake for 30 minutes until topping is crisp and slightly browned.

Given how easy this is to make and much we like this recipe, I'll have to try and healthify this up. I think I could substitute 2 Tbsps no-trans margarine and 2 Tbsps applesauce for the ¼ cup of butter in the filling. And I wonder if we would even notice if I left out the heavy cream. The butter for the topping could also go no-trans margarine, but I wouldn't use applesauce here. Might could swap out some sugar for Splenda, too.