How to Improvise a Purple Sweet Potato Pie:
Come home from dance class to find your mother making some strange concoction.
Figure out that it’s mashed purple sweet potato in the pot, mixed in with some sugar to taste (which is not much). Take a taste. Mmm.
Decide to make some sweet potato pie with the graham cracker cookie dough that you were intending to bake.
Of course, get out the butter. Butter is vital for deliciousness.
Measure out 24g of butter, just for accountability.
Melt the butter in the microwave while you take photos of your mini tart pan.
It’s so cute.
Almost forget about the butter. Take it out.
Give it a stir with your fork with your right hand.
Realise you have to take photos with your right hand. Transfer the fork to your left hand.
Whoops.
Finish melting the butter and add it to your pot of mashed sweet potatoes.
Take out the quartered recipe (it used to be halved, but the other half was baked burnt) of Graham Cracker Dough.
Graham Cracker Recipe
adapted and halved recipe from 101 Cookbooks
- 1 1/4 cups plus 1 tablespoon unbleached pastry flour or unbleached all-purpose flour graham/whole wheat flour (see below ratio/recipe)
- 1/4 cup dark brown sugar, lightly packed
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 3/8 teaspoon kosher salt
- 3 tablespoons (1 3/4 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch cubes and frozen
- 1.5 tablespoons mild-flavored honey, such as clover pancake syrup
- 2 1/2 tablespoons whole milk
- 1 tablespoons pure vanilla extract
Combine the flour, brown sugar, baking soda, and salt. Cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse meal.
In a small bowl, whisk together the honey, milk, and vanilla extract. Add to the flour mixture and mix until the dough barely comes together. It will be very soft and sticky.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and pat the dough into a rectangle about 1 inch thick. Wrap in plastic and chill until firm, about 2 hours or overnight.
Divide the dough in half and return one half to the refrigerator. Sift an even layer of flour onto the work surface and roll the dough into a long rectangle about 1/8 inch thick. The dough will be sticky, so flour as necessary. Cut as desired. Gather the scraps together into a ball, chill until firm, and reroll. Cut again.
Adjust the oven rack to the upper and lower positions and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Bake for 25 minutes, until browned and slightly firm to the touch, rotating the sheets halfway through to ensure even baking.
GRAHAM FLOUR RATIO:
1 cup graham flour =
84g white flour (~2/3 cup) + 15g (less than 1/3 cup) wheat bran
Remember how you binged on this dough a few days ago.
Consider getting yourself a slice again. (It has no eggs.)
Almost don’t get any, but… okay just one slice.
Crack an egg into the sweet potato filling.
Lament the fact you can no longer taste it.
Marvel at how grossly blue-green the unmixed egg looks in the filling.
Attempt to roll out your graham cracker dough.
Realise that the recipe was not kidding when it stated that the dough will be very soft and sticky.
Simply press the dough into the pie pan instead.
Forget to grease and flour the pan, hoping that it’s non-stick Teflon like all your other bakeware.
Notice that the crust isn’t quite coming up the sides. Don’t worry, just use your knuckles. It’ll get there.
Scrape the filling out of the saucepan with a rubber spatula and spread it smoothly while remembering the How to Frost a Cake with Meg Ray tutorial on Chow.
Sorta fail because it’s not frosting, it’s sweet potato, but manage to make it prettily smooth all the same.
Since it was your mother who was mashing the sweet potato and it was your mother who had added the sugar, realise that it was probably a miniscule, insufficient amount.
Give in to your continued obsession with brown sugar and sprinkle liberally on top.
Not too liberally. Your mother likes it unsweet for a reason.
Turn on your oven. Realise you have no temperature to report because you don’t know anything about your oven.
Let’s just leave it at “turn on your oven.”
Marvel at the mess you just made and lament how you didn’t need to make it because you didn’t need to roll out the dough anyway.
Wonder how the Pioneer Woman takes such beautiful photos when she’s cooking without getting her camera covered in flour.
Oh crap, my (dad’s) camera is covered in flour!
Just kidding, dad.
After about 25 minutes in the oven, check with a knife to see if the filling has set.
Stupid. It was set already, it’s like pumpkin pie. It’s solid.
Your mother recommended about 25 minutes for pie, so that’s what you did.
Turns out to be perfect.
Cut out a few slivers.
Then a few pieces.
Then realise that it’s really quite good, though a bit unsweet.
It could do with some whipped cream.
Or as my sister suggested, some vanilla ice cream.
Look on gladly as your sister enjoys what you’ve made.
Finally.
Keep taking paparazzi photos of your sister eating pie.
Turn off your camera when she gets annoyed at how many photos you’re taking.
Enjoy.
**
Have you ever improvised your way through a “recipe”? How did it turn out?
Oooh, I love the way this turned out! I should really try cooking with purple sweet potatoes. They add that extra novelty factor of being an unusual colour.
I haven’t made sweet potato pie in a long time. Must remedy that.
Thanks Juji! I love the purpleness of the pie – it makes it more fun to eat. I’ve actually never made sweet potato pie before, but I figured it was about the same as pumpkin pie… not that I’ve made that before, either. :P
Wei-Wei
wow…… this looks amazing. I thought it was blueberry for a second! is purple sweet potato = purple yam = ube? I almost thought it was taro but taro is actually white…
anyway, I always improvise, haha.. I don’t think I’ve ever faithfully followed a recipe. no wonder everything I make doesn’t necessarily taste how I expect it to.. but it’s usually still not bad! ;)
♥ loving your blog as always (always being since 3 days ago when I discovered you :D)
My mom’s a big fan of improvising. She always says I’m too rigid when I use recipes :S But I guess it’s a nice thing to learn how to cook by intuition. This pie was fun and because it was risky it made it more fun!
I especially love the colour of it in that photo of it without the brown sugar before going in the oven. Delicious :D I’m not sure what ube is but I just know that this variety of purple sweet potato isn’t really yummy right now. It wasn’t sweet and it was sort of dry, which is why I guess my mom peeled it and mashed it intstead.
Thanks love! :)
Wei-Wei
So cute! I love how you blog. We don’t get purple sweet potatoes very often here although we get them on occasion at the wet markets. Hopefully the season for purple sweet potatoes is round the corner. I just like how prettily purple they look. Lol. xoxo
Aw thanks Nat! I actually think I like regular yellow (orange?) sweet potatoes better because the flavour is more consistently yummy. These purple ones probably aren’t the “real” purple Okinawan ones you can get from Japan, which are allegedly so much sweeter and yummier. You can find them featured here (http://asianaisle.com/2009/05/19/okinawan-sweet-potatoes/) and here (http://asianaisle.com/2009/11/25/okinawan-sweet-potatoes-revisited/) on Asian Aisle. I love the colour too! :D
Wei-Wei
Beautiful pictures! I’ve only had purple sweet potatoes like twice in my life…but they were roasted. I pretty much like any form of sweet potatoes…heheh! Your pie kind of looks like Taro pie because of the color :-D
Come to think of it, I think that the best way to have sweet potatoes WOULD be roasted/baked. Brings out that awesome natural sweetness! But I agree, sweet potatoes in any form = yum.
Wei-Wei
That would be my favourite way, too. When I was little I looooved to buy these huge-ass orange/yellow sweet potatoes which are roasted in a big metal cylinder on the sidewalk and have blackened skins… then you peel it away, almost burning your fingers and the inside is bright orangey yellow like a traffic light, the steam bursts out, and the smell… oh, gosh. I want one right now. D:
Wei-Wei
That is one of the most beautiful pie I have seen! Stunning!
Thank you! I have to credit the sweet potato – it’s just such an amazing colour. :D
Wei-Wei
I adore the color of your sweet potato! I can never find that color here :(
Isn’t it beautiful? It wasn’t that yummy though :(
Wei-Wei
I have never tries purple sweet potatoes. Where do you find them? I cannot believe for improvising this whole thing how well it turned out. Now that is what a real chef can do in my opinion. I have only been able to improvise a few recipes in my lifetime… and the others well did not turn out so well lol!
-Court
I don’t know where my mom found them… maybe at just a market somewhere? The grocery-shopping scene is a lot more different here than it is in the USA. :)
It was actually quite easy – I want the recipe book “How to Cook Everything” which basically gives you ratios and basic formulas for dishes. Like this pie, which has a starchy sweet potato filling, you can just add egg for binder… and butter, which is good for everything :D
Wei-Wei
I do not know how it left that many comments sorry :P
No worries! I’ll just delete the extra ones :)
Wei-Wei
Hahahaha! Your blog is so entertaining. This recipe/ post put the biggest smile on my face.
Thank you! I’m glad my blog makes people happy :D
Wei-Wei
I loved this post! I’ve never actually heard of purple sweet potato, sounds interesting! That pie looks delicious :)
I guess you could make this with regular sweet potato, too. I think you could look for purple sweet potatoes from Okinawa in wet markets or Asian markets – I’ve heard that once you go purple and Okinawan, you cannot go back because they’re just so sweet and yummy. I’ve never had it though, because I don’t want to ruin my love for regular ones :D
Wei-Wei
ARGH! I thought I had you on my google feed thingy, but it never updated me that you had posted!
Boo :(
Anywho, those are some deliciously beautiful PURPLE pictures. wow. I think that’s my new favorite color. Is that even purple though? I don’t know. I love graham cracker crust. It’s deliciousss…I’ve never tried it with anything else besides on the bottom of cheesecake though (the no bake jello kind). I guess I’ll have to experiment with other crust-y dishes.
<3
Floey
I think I’ve seen that problem, too – whenever I publish for me, it takes about an hour or more to pop up on Google Reader. (Yeah, I subscribed to myself. It helps me keep tabs on any problems that might occur!) But thank you! I love purple, and it used to be my favourite colour too! Now it’s red as I think you can see :D
I think my crust was a little different in the sense that it was just the raw dough pressed down instead of crumbs mixed with a binder than pressed down; I forgot to take the pie out of the mold straight away, so the crust got a little soggy :(
Wei-Wei
Hey Wei-wei! Your tarts look very nice. :) And you just gave me an idea.. I can make yam tarts for my mom! She loves yam! I think yam is what you guys call taro right? I’m not sure but it’s yu tou in Chinese. Mmmm.. thinking about it makes me feel hungry now. Haha.
Yam tarts! They sound great, I think you should definitely make it! I think that yu tou is “Chinese yam” though, apparently yams are a whole different thing, very similar to sweet potatoes (I think those in the US call sweet potatoes yams!) So yes, yu tou is taro or Chinese yam. It sounds great! Remember to sweeten it enough though ;)
Wei-Wei
PS: I’d be honoured if you linked me on your blog. :D
oh and umm.. hope it’s ok if I link you from my blog? let me know if you want me to take it down.
When I first saw pictures of the purple paste, I was like, ummm I don’t think eatable food is supposed to look like that.
But the final result looks fantastic! Your improvisation skills are impressive indeed!
Me too; I really deeply dislike artificially-coloured food but some foods are just naturally coloured that way. I think it looks amazing.
Thanks for commenting! You’ve been blogging since 2002?! Impressive! :D I could learn a thing or two from you :)
Wei-Wei
Wei-Wei,
Where did you find those Okinawan Sweet Potatoes!?! My husband used to buy them in Hawaii, but I can’t find them anywhere in the states! They are my absolute favorite potatoes :-)
~Alyssa
I don’t these are really Okinawan! They looked similar but I don’t think they tasted very good (apparently Okinawan are crazy sweet and delicious!) I wouldn’t want to try Okinawan though, they might spoil my appetite for normal sweet potatoes ;)
Wei-Wei
looks great! I would love to try this soon.
Thanks! Improvising is a lot of fun ;)
Wei-Wei
I love this! I can’t find purple potatoes anywhere here, but my goodness if I could I’d make this the next time I had company over. It’s so pretty. I’m sure it tasted good, too, but I might just want to admire it. :)
Be warned – definitely add sugar to your taste! I didn’t have measurements in the first place, so you might have to improvise like I did ;) Have fun! :D
Wei-Wei
Hi hon!
WOW I’ve never tried this before.. looks so pretty, I love the purple :)
Heyyy Bev! Go get yourself some purple potatoes from the supermarket. Actually… don’t. They didn’t taste all that good. Just get regular ones and your tastebuds will thank you. (Don’t judge. I could eat sweet potato everyday if I wanted to.)
Wei-Wei
Yum Weiwei!
Guess who I am :P
TSAI TSAI! <3333333 Yay finally somebody I know in real life reads my blog! (Of course I know who you are, you left your email, didn't you? I can see it :D)
Wei-Wei
Your narrative is ridiculously adorable. And that pie is GORGEOUS! I feel like a little kid would go nuts for that- PURPLE PIE?! Amazing.
Thank you Lele! I would go nuts for purple pie too ;)
Wei-Wei
I first thought? “Mmmm! that looks like purple icing!” Now how the heck do I find these purple sweet potatoes? I gotta find ‘em!
It DOES look like icing! Mmm. Purple icing actually sounds pretty awesome! I wonder what flavour they’d be? A mix of raspberry and blueberry, maybe? I don’t know where you’d find these; I think look in Asian markets, wet markets, or maybe even farmers markets. Good luck! The Okinawan ones are highly recommended :)
Wei-Wei