This sweet potato pie combines brandy, lemon juice and zest, and vanilla extract with sweet potatoes in a pie that is bursting with flavor! It will change the way you look at sweet potatoes forever!
Hundreds of years ago colonists had already created and perfected an iconic Southern American dessert: The Sweet Potato Pie. They have transformed the humble sweet potato into a dessert that is absolutely sensational! I will never look at a sweet potato the same again. No longer will it be relegated to a Thanksgiving side-dish.
This is no ordinary sweet potato pie either. This is Mary Randolph's Sweet Potato Pie and it is extraordinary. She masterfully combines brandy, lemon juice, lemon zest, vanilla extract and sweet potatoes into a pie that is positively bursting with flavor.
The zing of the lemon counterbalances the sweetness from the sweet potatoes, and the brandy adds additional depth of flavor. This pie would show up even the best pumpkin pies.
And I LOVE pumpkin pie. I am the biggest fan of all things pumpkin, as is evidenced by my 25 Best Pumpkin Recipes for Fall.
Mary Randolph first published her influential cookbook The Virginia Housewife in 1824, which is generally considered to be the first Southern cookbook. This recipe is nestled in there as Sweet Potato Pudding. Mary Randolph was still in the habit of calling all desserts, pie or otherwise, puddings in the British sense of the word.
Call it what you will, the flavors blew me away.
I actually found this recipe in The Southern Heritage Pies and Pastry Cookbook (1984 Edition), which is my current obsession. You’ll be seeing a lot more from this cookbook because it’s ridiculous. Ridiculously Amazing.
Want. To. Make. Pie. Every. Night. Must. Resist.
I baked this pie in a cream cheese crust that will bowl you over. The crust was a botched first attempt at the pastry for Apricot Kolaches. It turns out that if you don't follow the instructions exactly, you end up with a mess (and possibly tears).
Never one to waste, I pulled together the dough with some ice water, wrapped it in plastic wrap and threw it in the freezer to deal with later. Well thank heavens I sometimes forget to follow instructions! It's now one of my favorite piecrusts and it's super easy because you don't have to cut the butter into the flour. Nope you get to use a hand mixer! Heck yes!
Instead of using the cream cheese crust as given below, you can also use my other favorite piecrust recipe, which would be equally amazing!
Paired with Lemon Whipped Cream this pie will be a hit in the Summer, Winter or a welcome addition to any Thanksgiving table.
P.S. - The secret to the bright orange color in this (and any) sweet potato pie is boiling the sweet potatoes instead of baking them.
Recipe
Mary Randolph’s Sweet Potato Pie
Ingredients
For the Cream Cheese Crust:
- 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 8 oz cream cheese
- 1 cup unsalted butter (softened)
- ice water (as needed)
For the Sweet Potato Filling:
- ¼ cup butter (unsalted, softened)
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 cups cooked (mashed sweet potatoes)
- 3 eggs (room temperature)
- ¼ cup brandy
- 2 teaspoons lemon zest (be careful not to get the bitter, white pith!)
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ⅛ teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
- 1 9-inch pastry shell
Instructions
To Prepare the Cream Cheese Pastry:
- Sift flour and salt together in a medium bowl and set aside.
- Beat the cream cheese and butter together with a stand mixer or a hand mixer until completely incorporated and creamy (3-5 minutes).
- Reduce the speed of the mixer and add in the flour. Mix until the dough comes together. If the dough is not cohesive and will not stay in a ball, sprinkle ice water a tablespoon at a time over the dough and mix with a fork until it comes together in a ball.
- Flatten into a circle, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate until hard, at least 4 hours. Overnight refrigeration is recommended.
- Roll out your pastry to ⅛th inch thick and line a pie dish, trim the edges, roll them under and crimp decoratively. Cover loosely and place in the refrigerator until ready to fill.
To Prepare the Filling:
- Preheat oven to 400°F
- Place brandy in a small pan and heat until warm. Do not boil. Keep warm.
- Cream butter in a mixing bowl with a hand mixer: gradually add sugar, beating well after each addition. Add potatoes; beat on medium speed until well blended.
- Add eggs, one at a time; beating after each addition.
- Add the brandy, lemon zest, lemon juice, vanilla and nutmeg to the sweet potato mixture; stir until well blended.
- Pour mixture into pastry shell.
- Bake at 400°F for 15 minutes. Lower the temperature to 350°F and continue baking until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean, about 25 more minutes.
- Update: These days I prefer to par bake my single crust pies. It makes for an extra flakey, tender crust that is not soggy. If you blind bake your crust, the pie will bake at 350°F for 20-30 minutes.
This is definitely not a true blue Southern Sweet Potato Pie recipe it is missing very important things like Evaporated Milk.and Cinnamon and you don't have close to enough Butter at all.No Brandy should be added at all that lemon zest and lemon juice is not necessary,you should always add Evaporated Milk that and a good amount of Butter is the key to an Authentic Southern Sweet Potato Pie
Hi Rosalind, Mary Randolph first published her influential cookbook The Virginia Housewife in 1824, which is generally considered to be the first Southern cookbook. This pie is hers!
I want to try the recipe but don’t drink alcohol! What can I substitute for the brandy that is non alcoholic.
You can just omit it, Sue!
Hi. I made this pie last night although I didn’t have a full 1/4c of E&J and I used a store bought pie crust, but the pie was still delicious!! Next time, I’m going to make your recipe for the crust as well!!!
I'm so glad you enjoyed it!!!
I made this pie several times, this recipe is awesome! My family and friends think I'm a real baker. Thanks for the recipe!
Hi Stephanie! If you made this pie then you ARE a real baker! Happy baking!
Hi,
I found this site and want to try this recipe but I have a question. I assume that I needed a frozen unbaked 9inch pie crush to go along with the sour cream pie crust. As if, I was layering the sour cream crust into the frozen unbaked 9 inc pastry shell? The way it is written makes it seems as if you would have a sour cream hand made crust and then a pastry shell which is listed last.
I search hard for a 9inch unbaked pastry shell...I found Marie Callender at Kroger, however its not needed right. This recipe calls for you to make your own pastry shell?
Thanks
Hi Mika, I'm sorry that is so confusing! You can either use a homemade one (like the cream cheese one I used) or you can use an unbaked 9" pie crust recipe of your choice...or you can buy one!
Thanks,
I used the one I bought.... Since I'd bought the sour cream I rubbed it into one of the store bought pie crust put into the freezer and then baked it about 5 minutes before adding filling. Hope it work!
Again, Thanks
Interesting approach! Let me know how it goes!
I goingto bake this pie in a couple of days. Noting the comment about the overwhelming brandy flavor, I'm wondering if I should reduce the amount to one ounce. I just bought a bottle of Hennessy cognac to use in a butternut squash pie recipe I've baked twice last week. But I omitted the brandy in those tests as I was trying to adjust the spices. I don't drink brandy, so I'm not sure how strong Hennessy is compared to E&J.
I'm thrilled to have found your blog. Culinary culture is an important aspect of our identity.. I few years ago I took several hands-on culinary cooking classes with a curator and food historian at the Getty Museum. She created menus based on the time period of an exhibit. She tried to keep the ingredients as authentic as possible to give participants a better understanding of culture through food. Classes began with a tour and lecture on the exhibit; participants then prepared the dishes. The group then enjoyed the meal together.
Hi Cate! Cognac will certainly be delicious and is of a higher quality than the brand I used. If you are concerned, switch steps 9 and 10 in the recipe so that you can taste the flavors without having to eat raw eggs. Start with 1 tablespoon and go from there. The flavors will meld and only improve once the pie is baked and cooled!
I am so happy you found my blog! Those classes with a food historian sound amazing! I would enjoy that immensely as I find the way food has changed over centuries absolutely fascinating! I wonder if there are similar classes here in NYC. I will have to look into it! Thank you so much for your comment and let me know how you like the pie!
This adaptation of Mary Randolph's sweet potato pie is simple perfect. The lemon brightens the sweet potatoe flavor,, and the cognac evokes just a hint of warm caramel. It's everything I want in a custard pie. Light custard, bright flavor, delicately sweet, with a soft hint of caramel. Oh and the color of this pie! We certainly eat first with our eyes.
There's a tendency toward sugar in pumpkin, squash, and sweet potatoe pies despite there natural sweetness. I'm especially put off by the overwhelming addition of brown sugar in such pies. It's common to see recipes with two to three cups of sugar, mixed with an array of spices that compete with or cancel each other out. The addition of heavy creams and canned milks then coagulate everything into a thick goo that neither resembles nor tastes like the squash or root.
It was a treat to taste the sweet potato in this pie.
I used organic orange sweet potatoes, cultured butter, cane sugar, vanilla bean paste, and lemons picked from the garden. I used the full 60 ml of Hennessy cognac. (Tip: if readers are reluctant to purchase a large bottle of good cognac, liquor stores offer quality cognac in miniature "airline" bottles-. My local Bevmo in Napa, CA offers Hennessy miniatures for $6.)
I roasted the sweet potatoes in their skins, simply because I prefer the flavor of a roasted sweet potato to boiled. I made a gluten free crust as I'm a celiac.
I do like the gradual mixing of sugar into the butter. I think I'll use that technique for my shortbread as it blends the sugar and butter beautifully.
Thank you for sharing this delicious recipe. This recipe is going into my favorites binder.
Just wanted to let you know that I made this for Thanksgiving and it was incredible! The right amount of sweet/savory. I'm making it again for my friend's Christmas party this weekend, just because it's so good and I want everyone else to enjoy it!!
Thank you very much, Gwendolyn for coming back to comment! I am so happy that you enjoyed this pie and I hope you and your friends enjoyed it again at the Christmas party! Merry Christmas!
I was so excited to try this recipe; I've been looking for a sweet potato pie recipe for a long time the crust turned out great, but from reading the recipe I didn't realize how many crusts one recipe would make. My husband pointed out that I've made pies before and I should have been able to tell, but I think I was just too focused on the filling. For future reference, I think one recipe will make 4 single crust pies.
Also, I followed the recipe exactly and realized almost immediately that there was too much brandy. I hoped that a lot of it would cook off, but to my disappointment that was not the case. So unfortunately the brandy flavour (for me and my family at least) completely overpowered the whole thing. Any suggestions for what to do now that they are baked, to reduce this flavour somewhat?
Hi Virginia. I'm so sorry that you were disappointed. The crust recipe as written is enough for 1 double crust deep-dish pie or two single crust deep dish pies. I will adjust the instructions because you are absolutely right - that is waaay too much crust for this recipe! Since this pie crust recipe was an accident, I had previously divided the crust into two and froze the dough and didn't think twice about it months later when I pulled out one for this recipe. Thank you!!
As for the brandy - I'm so sorry it was too much for your taste. I definitely didn't find the brandy flavor to be overpowering. In addition to the difference in everyone's tastes I can think of several things: your brandy was stronger than mine (I used one that was 80 proof) and I cook with a more expensive brandy. I use E&J XO Extra Smooth Brandy which has an almost floral note and is definitely less intense than some others I have tried. The only way I can think to fix it is to eat it with ice cream or more lemon whipped cream - unfortunately once it's baked in the pie, there isn't much you can do. The lemon flavor in the whipped cream will definitely help cut the brandy but it isn't going to completely fix it.
Thank you so much for your feedback, Virginia. I'm going to adjust the recipe now. I am so unhappy that you didn't enjoy it because this pie blew me away and I wish it had done for you too!
This is definitely not a true blue Southern Sweet Potato Pie recipe it is missing very important things like Cream..Nutmeg and Cinnamon and you don't have close to enough Butter at all this is a Fail and a disgrace to a real Sweet Potato Potato Pie
Hi Rosalind, as you'll see this is Mary Randolph's recipe, one of the first writers of a Southern cookbook back in 1824.
Oh I thought of one more thing! Did you heat your brandy? Because that definitely takes some of the edge off.
I really wanted to love it. I did heat the brandy. I'm not a brandy drinker but it did look to be a fairly good one - but I wouldn't really know. It said 40% alcohol - I don't know if that's what you mean by 80-proof (probably a difference between U.S. / Canadian terminology). I guessed that the lemon whipped cream would help but since there are many in my extended family not so fond of lemon I used regular; maybe now that it's just my immediate family I'll "whip up" some lemon flavoured. I will definitely try again with much less brandy (maybe even without), but then I'm guessing I'll need something else to add some depth to the flavour. Thanks for your reply.
You are welcome! 80 proof is 40% alcohol by volume, so that wasn't the difference. I don't drink brandy either! But when I open the bottle to sniff it it smells nice unlike some hard liquors that smell more pungent. Did you cut the amount of lemon juice in the filling too by any chance?
If you do try it again maybe you could try bringing the brandy to a boil to cook off some more of the alcoholic flavor and then adding it to the filling 1 tablespoon at a time until you get just a nice subtle flavor that doesn't taste like "brandy". If you worry about the eggs, you could try swapping steps 9 & 10, but I don't know how that will change the final texture of the pie.
This recipe looks great, but I'm really intrigued by the cream cheese crust! It looks incredible.
Thanks! The cream cheese crust is amazing!
I love sweet potato pie! I used to make this seasonally at my other job. But I often tend to OD with baking spices in dishes like this just because I prefer it like that. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever boiled sweet potatoes before. I've only used the dry cooking methods with them. I just realized that after reading your recipe.
I've never tried cream cheese crust before. That sounds really interesting. Yay for your screw ups lol. The best discoveries are always accidents. Is it still flakey with the addition of the cream cheese? Or it is a completely different type of crust? I have had my share of piecrust mishaps too. The worst one was when I accidently used the wrong flour and it came out all glutteny with rice cake consistency. If you were in that situation, I can imagine you saving it and creating something else edible with it. But me, I just tossed it lol.
I'd ever had it before but I love it now! I also love to heavily spice my pies but this one was truly lovely the way it is written. The cream cheese crust is still flakey. It is very similar to the one from my great-grandmother's pecan tassies but even more flakey. But it is much richer than even a butter crust so I wouldn't want to pair it with a rich or super sweet filling. It would be too much. Pie crusts are definitely an art but I don't know if I could have saved a rice cake type crust!