While growing up, it was always left to me to cook for my little sister. At the time, I hated cooking. The easiest thing for me to do was to put a quick meal in the oven. If it was not that, then it was breakfast. Pancakes, eggs and sausage or bacon.
In my opinion, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. On top of that, I love it so much I can eat it for all three meals every day. My mom and sister is just as crazy about breakfast as I am.
Every holiday, the family gathers at my grandmother’s house in Asheville. Every since our grandfather passed away, she has given each of us a “project”. Our personal project simply means that my grandmother has something she needs us to cook. My cousin makes the macaroni and cheese, my aunt my make a pie or turkey and I make the cakes!
I was thrilled when I realized that my grandmother wanted to leave me her recipes for the pound cake. With her simple recipe, I am now able to make a 7-up pound cake, cream cheese pound cake and a lemon pound cake. Throughout the years, I have finally mastered her recipe!
However, this article is to showcase my first attempt at a sweet potato pie. My fiancé’s mother gave me her recipe for sweet potato bread. So I used her recipe but put it into the pie instead.
Here are the ingredients:
- 1 cup of sugar
- 1 cup of flour
- cinnamon
- 2 tablespoons of vanilla
- 4 sweet potatoes
- 2 eggs
- 2 pie shells
The first thing I do is boil the sweet potatoes. I leave them in the skin. These boil the whole time until I am ready to mix. While they are boiling, I mix all of my dry ingredients together. So, I have my sugar, flour and cinnamon together and mixed in a big bowl. At this time, I turn on the oven to 375F.
It takes about 20 minutes for the potatoes to soften up. I test the potatoes by poking them with a fork. If the fork slides through with no problem and the potato slides right off the fork, then I know they are ready. I leave them in the bowl, but rinse them off with cold water to cool them down.
Once they are cool enough, I peel the skin off (the skin comes off without any issues). I add the potatoes to the bowl with my dry ingredients and then add my vanilla and eggs. I mix the ingredients together with a beater. This takes out all of the strings. Once it is mixed to my liking, no lumps, I add the contents of the bowl to the pie shells. And cook them in the oven until the top turns golden brown. Around 45 minutes is the limit.
This time, I had way more filling then I needed, so I used the leftovers and made sweet potato bread. It is just the filling in a pan without any crust and cooked at the same rate and heat as the pies.
As a stay at home mom, I am always busy dealing with my daughter. Through her I learned that cooking is a lot more fun than I used to think. When I am cooking she wants to be on my hip watching. I think she may end up enjoying cooking just as much as she enjoys eating the food. I have now come to realize that I enjoy baking!
Stay tuned for more recipes, failures and successes.
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Majama Boss 