Grandma’s Old Fashioned Sweet Potato Pie Recipe
Ingredients
Pie Dough:
1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
4 tablespoons unsalted butter chilled, cut into ¼-inch pieces
3 tablespoons vegetable shortening chilled
4 – 5 tablespoons ice water
Sweet Potato Filling:
2 pounds sweet potatoes about 5 small to medium
2 tablespoons unsalted butter softened
3 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
1 cup sugar
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg ideally fresh
¼ teaspoon salt
2 – 3 tablespoons bourbon
1 tablespoon molasses
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
⅔ cup whole milk
¼ cup dark brown sugar packed
Directions
Using your food processor pulse flour, salt and sugar until combined. Sprinkle butter pieces over flour mixture and pulse several times. Add shortening and continue pulsing until flour is pale yellow and resembles crumbs, no larger than the size of pearls. Dump crumbs into another bowl, if necessary.
Evenly distribute 4 – 5 tablespoons of ice water on mixture. Knead dough until dough forms a ball.
Flatten dough into a 4 or 5 inch roundish ball. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, or up to 2 days, before you need to roll use it.
Allow to come to room temperature before using. Roll dough out on lightly floured surface or between two large sheets of parchment paper into a 12 inch roundish circle, less than ¼ inch thick.
Carefully place dough into pie plate by gently lifting dough edges with one hand while pressing around the pan bottom with your other hand. Trim edge to ½ inch beyond pan edge. Refrigerate uncooked pie shell for 40 minutes and then freeze for 20 minutes. This technique will help to reduce crust shrinkage while baking.
Preheat your oven to 375 degrees, when ready to bake.
Press heavy duty or doubled foil inside uncooked pie shell and fold foil edges over to protect pie crust edge from burning. Weight foil down as best you can using weights like dried beans or uncooked rice. I’ve even taken a smaller pie plate filled with water and placed it in the middle of the plate, on top of the uncooked crust, and it worked beautifully. Bake, leaving everything on top of crust until crust looks dry, 18 to 20 minutes. I simply bake for 18 minutes and gently remove foil and weights by lifting foil edges or doing whatever is necessary to remove foil and weights. Return crust to oven and bake until a nice golden brown, about 8 -10 minutes longer. Remove pie crust from oven and reduce your oven’s temperature to 350 degrees.
Pierce sweet potatoes many times with fork and place on paper towels and microwave on full power for 5 minutes, flip each potato over and cook until tender, not mushy, another 5 minutes. Cool potatoes for 10 to 15 minutes.
Cut each potato in half and scoop and scrape out potato flesh into a bowl, reserve skins for another use or discard. I sometimes use an oven mitt to hold potatoes or paper towels or a clean cloth, if too hot to handle. There should be around 2 cups of sweet potato flesh when you’re done. While potatoes are still hot or at least warm, add butter and mash with masher or fork until only small lumps of potato remain.
In a medium sized bowl, combine eggs, egg yolks, sugar, nutmeg, and salt with a whisk.
Add bourbon, molasses, vanilla, and milk.
Slowly add egg mixture to your sweet potatoes until combined.
Heat your partially baked pie crust in your oven until warm, around 5 minutes.
Sprinkle brown sugar across bottom of pie crust, as evenly as possible.
Pour your sweet potato mixture on top of brown sugar layer until covered.
Bake for 45 minutes and filling is set around edges and center jiggles slightly when adjusted.
Transfer pie to wire rack to allow to cool to room temperature which takes somewhere around 2 hours.
