This Sweet Potato Pie is rich, velvety, and topped with the most heavenly toasted marshmallow fluff!
I’m not sure if it’s because I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, or if it’s because I came from a biracial Asian family, but sweet potato pie was never served at our holiday gatherings. In fact, I don’t think I was even introduced to sweet potatoes until my 20’s. Before that, sweet potatoes seemed like such an odd vegetable to me. I was so used to enjoying potatoes in savory dishes like mashed potatoes, potato salad, and scalloped potatoes. So wrapping my head around a SWEET potato dish took a while.
Luckily, once I tried sweet potato casserole for the first time, I was HOOKED. Similar to jello dishes during the holidays, sweet potatoes were yet another way to enjoy dessert during dinnertime–score! Speaking of, if you’re interested in a particularly drool-worthy sweet potato dish, check out my recipe for Salted Caramel Sweet Potato Casserole!
Although I’ve made several different sweet potato casseroles over the years, sweet potato pie was one dessert I had yet to try…until NOW.
Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I think I did a pretty good job for my first time. I’m not sure if this is as traditional as your standard sweet potato pie, but I can guarantee it’s just as delicious, if not MORE so!
Let’s start with the crust. Although most sweet potato pie recipes call for a pastry pie crust, I opted for a cookie crust. Not only is it a much quicker option, but in my opinion, I felt that a buttery cookie crust would go really well with the sweet potato filling. Also, instead of graham crackers, I went with my new favorite–Biscoff cookies! A few weeks ago, I made my first Biscoff cookie crust in this Cookie Butter Cream Pie, and I was obsessed with how flavorful the crust was. With their brown sugary, almost toffee-like flavor, I knew these cookies would be perfect in this pie.
While a lot of recipes call for boiling the sweet potatoes, I roasted mine instead. I’ve always been a little biased towards roasting, rather than boiling because of the flavor that it adds to literally anything. It does require a little more time to roast than boil, but the extra flavor is always worth it to me.
Aside from picking out the longer, skinnier sweet potatoes, one way to speed up the roasting process is to cut your sweet potato in half before placing it in the oven. As opposed to a whole potato which can take anywhere from 45-60 minutes to bake (in a 425ºF oven), a half potato will take roughly 25-35 minutes, which is about half the time.
To ensure that deliciously velvety bite, I placed my roasted, peeled sweet potatoes in a food processor and puréed them until silky smooth. I don’t know about you, but I’m not a fan of random chunks of sweet potato in my pie. I like a creamy, smooth consistency which is difficult to achieve with a potato masher alone. However, if you don’t have a food processor or an immersion blender, you can remove any sweet potato bits by pouring your sweet potato filling through a fine-mesh sieve before it goes into the crust.
As you can see, sweet potato pie looks very similar to pumpkin pie. The color, the texture, and even the ingredients involved are rather comparable. Aside from pumpkin, you’re using almost all the same ingredients as you would for a pumpkin pie–eggs, sugar, evaporated milk, vanilla, and warm spices like cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg. Along with all of these ingredients, melted butter is added to the filling. I, of course, couldn’t help myself and had to brown the butter. My philosophy is if you’re gonna melt the butter anyway, you might as well take the extra 2 or 3 minutes to brown it and intensify the flavor.
Once the pie is baked and cooled, it’s time to add the fluffy! Being that sweet potatoes are traditionally served with marshmallows sprinkled on top, I couldn’t think of anything more fitting than homemade marshmallow fluff. Sure, you could just open up a container of store-bought marshmallow fluff and spread it on top, but why do that when homemade marshmallow fluff is embarrassingly easy and quick to make? Plus, homemade is TEN times more fluffy than the store-bought stuff, which tends to be a little runny.
All you have to do is combine a few egg whites with some sugar–I used brown sugar for a hit of maple flavor. This mixture is heated over a double-boiler until the temperature reaches 160ºF, or basically once all the sugar is completely dissolved. Cream of tartar is then added before the entire thing gets whipped up until soft peaks form. Finally, stir in a little vanilla, and you have yourself the most light and airy marshmallow to ever grace your lips.
And no, we’re not done yet! Because once this angelic fluff is spread on top of the pie, it’s time to break out your inner pyromaniac and torch it! Not only do you get to experience the heavenly smell of burnt sugar as you’re toasting the fluff, but who doesn’t enjoy roasting marshmallows? If you don’t have a kitchen torch, you can also set your oven to broil and toast the fluff in the oven. Just make sure to keep an eye on it the entire time because it won’t take long at all!
Lusciously creamy sweet potato filling…fluffy cloud-like marshmallow topping…a rich and buttery Biscoff cookie crust…with a pie like this at Thanksgiving, I guarantee your guests will want to skip STRAIGHT to dessert!
Sweet Potato Pie
Ingredients
Crust:
- 2 cups Biscoff/Speculoos cookie crumbs
- 2 Tablespoons brown sugar
- 5 Tablespoons butter melted
Filling:
- 4 Tablespoons salted butter
- 2 cups (16 ounces) sweet potato purée*
- ½ cup packed brown sugar
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 1 ½ teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ground ginger
- ¼ teaspoon allspice
- ⅛ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 ¼ cup (10 ounces) evaporated milk
- 3 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
Marshmallow Topping:
- 3 large egg whites
- ¾ cup packed brown sugar
- ¼ teaspoon cream of tartar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
Instructions
Make the Crust:
- Preheat oven to 375ºF. Using a fork, toss the cookie crumbs, brown sugar, and melted butter together in a medium bowl. Press mixture into the bottom and sides of a 9-inch pie dish; set aside.
Make the Filling:
- In a medium saucepan, melt the butter over medium-low heat. As the butter melts, it’ll start to foam, then turn a clear golden color. Continue to stir the butter, scraping up any browned specks from the bottom of the pan as it starts to brown. It should have a nutty aroma. Once browned and nutty, remove from the heat and add the puréed sweet potato, both sugars, spices, salt, and about half of the evaporated milk, whisking until smooth. Add the eggs, one at a time, followed by the rest of the evaporated milk and vanilla.
- Pour sweet potato filling into the crust** and bake in the oven for 55-60 minutes, or until filling is set around the edges and center jiggles only slightly. If the pie is browning quicker than you’d like it to, cover it with a piece of foil to slow down the browning process.
- When the pie is done baking, remove it from the oven and allow it to cool completely--about 2 hours.
Make the Marshmallow Topping:
- Add the egg whites*** and sugar to a large heatproof bowl and set over a saucepan of barely simmering water. Heat mixture, stirring constantly, until it the temperature hits 160ºF on a candy thermometer, about 3 – 5 minutes. Remove bowl from saucepan, add the cream of tartar, and beat mixture with an electric hand-mixer (or in a stand mixer) on high speed until stiff glossy peaks form, about 6 – 8 minutes. Add the vanilla near the very end. Spread on top of the cooled pie.
- Toast the topping with a kitchen torch, or under the broiler of your oven. Cut into slices and serve.
Notes
**You might have a few tablespoons extra filling, depending on how deep your pie dish is.
***Make sure there is absolutely NO egg yolk left in the whites.
****Store leftover pie in the refrigerator.