Sweet Potatoes

Why am I making sweet potato casserole when it’s not Thanksgiving? Because we can have it year ‘round – especially in the winter when our local sweet potatoes are still in cold storage. The first time I had Thanksgiving at my in-laws, instead of having sweet potato casserole they had baked pureed sweet potatoes with the marshmallow topping. It’s really a matter of what your family traditions are, so my opinion about marshmallows is just that; I’m fine with having them on the occasional summer camping trip s’mores.

I was feeling nostalgic about sweet potato casserole and Tony said that we could make it just for a regular dinner and not have to wait for Thanksgiving. Duh, why didn’t I think of that? Sweet potatoes contain large amounts of vitamins A and C and are also high in fiber. When you’re mixing them, you can see they’re very fibrous. You already know by their color that they’re full of beta carotene.

This is an easy, one-bowl recipe so no reason to save it for special occasions; it’s a modified version of my Aunt Donice’s family recipe where I removed the white sugar and cut out half the butter (there’s still plenty of butter). You can taste the sweet potato a little more, which I never wanted to do as a kid, but now I’m OK with it. By the way, even if you have a can that says ‘yams’ on it, you have sweet potatoes. Yams are whiter (less beta carotene), drier, starchier, and not generally found in the U.S. unless you go to an international market. I read in “Fun science facts from the Library of Congress” that African slaves called ‘soft’ sweet potatoes ‘yams’ because they resembled the yams in Africa. That led to confusion so now the U.S. Department of Agriculture requires labels with the term ‘yam’ to be accompanied by the term ‘sweet potato.’^[1]

Sweet Potato Casserole
Sweet Potatoes
3-4 cups cooked or canned (40oz) sweet potato
1/4 C brown sugar
2 eggs
4 T melted butter
3/4 C milk
2 t vanilla
1/4 t nutmeg
Topping
1/2 C flour
1/2 C brown sugar
4 T melted butter
1/2-3/4 C chopped pecans
Preheat oven to 350. Put sweet potato ingredients in a bowl and blend until smooth. Transfer to a sprayed 9×13 baking dish.

Mix all of the topping ingredients and crumble the mixture over the sweet potatoes; you’ll see a little of the sweet potato through the topping. Bake 45 minutes until the topping starts to brown and gets a little crispy around the edges.