Sweet Potato Casserole

And now for the second most requested recipe from the Insta birthday story… While I don’t typically love traditional Thanksgiving food, I do love this Sweet Potato Casserole. I married a southern boy, so I gave sweet potatoes a try early on in our marriage with this recipe courtesy of one of my first cookbooks (Cooking Light, of course… it was 2001). Why had I always passed on the sweet potatoes on Thanksgiving growing up?! So good.

When we go south for Thanksgiving, Sweet Potato Casserole is more often served with marshmallows on top. I’m sure they are delicious. But I just can’t. I think I would take one bite and my sugar tolerance would be done. I would much rather have room for some apple pie!

This recipe calls for a pecan streusel mixture for the top. Still sweet, but just right for me. However, even the crunchy, delicious topping and all the family peer pressure in the world will not entice our youngest. While the rest of us have always loved this dish, he literally gagged eating them when he was maybe 3. Apparently sweet potatoes aren’t his thing. More for the rest of us!

I can be a lazy chef. When making these the other day, I was trying to come up with a solution to not have to hand chop the pecans, nor mix in the butter for the topping with a fork or pastry cutter. I put all the topping ingredients in the dry container of our Vitamix (because I also didn’t want to have to clean up all the parts of the food processor). And it cut in the butter and the pecans beautifully in a matter of seconds! I did also break up a few pecans by hand since the pieces got pretty small in the blender, even though I tried to be super quick and not let them get too fine. So if you’re having an equally lazy cooking day, give the blender a try!

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Sweet Potato Casserole

Course Side Dish

Yield 8 1/2 cup servings

Ingredients

• 1 large egg
• 2 1/4 pounds sweet potatoes
• 1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1/3 cup milk
• 2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp salt

For the topping

• 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 tbsp chilled unsalted butter
• 1/3 cup chopped pecans

Instructions

1. Peel sweet potatoes and cut them into about 1-inch chunks. Place in a medium pot and cover with water. Boil potatoes until they are soft and tender and easily pierced by a fork, about 20-30 minutes. Drain and mash.

2. Preheat oven to 350 F. Combine the first seven ingredients (all but the topping) in a bowl, and stir well. Alternately, mix with an electric mixer (no need to mash potatoes first). Spoon sweet potato mixture into a 2-quart baking dish.

3. Combine 1/2 cup brown sugar and flour for the topping in a bowl. Cut in 2 tablespoons chilled butter with a pastry blender or 2 knives until mixture is crumbly. Stir in pecans. Alternately, take the lazy route and mix the topping in your blender or food processor. Sprinkle topping over sweet potato mixture.

4. Bake for 30 minutes or until topping is bubbling at the edges.

Notes

Source: slightly adapted from Cooking Light Five Star Recipes, the Best of 10 Years