Thanksgiving and such

I went home last weekend for the first time since the school year started for Thanksgiving. I made a sweet potato pie for the occasion, and believe me, it was awesome - the first pie I ever made, too. I always thought pie making would be difficult because my mom would never do it and she's the best baker I know, but the hardest part is the crust and I didn't have any difficulty with it. The trick, which I gleaned from all the pie crust recipes I looked up, is to underwork it just prior to chilling it so that you can't overwork it when you roll it.

I guess you could still manage to overwork it, but there's an easy solution to that: use a rolling pin, not a wrecking ball.

I'll post the recipe for those interested, because it was surprisingly difficult to find a sweet potato pie recipe that didn't seem disgustingly sweet. I found the one with the least sugar and modified it to my liking.

Filling:

2 cups of mashed sweet potatoes
1/2 cup of brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tbsp of soft butter
2 tbsp of sour cream (or creme fraîche if you have it)
1/2 tsp of salt
Cinnamon to taste
Nutmeg to taste

The mashed sweet potatoes are pretty straightforward - wash, peel, cut, boil - and the amount you need depends on the size of the potatoes, so it's best to make a bit too much, set aside 2 cups and save the rest for dinner or a snack or something. Just stir it all together and put it in the fridge.

Crust:

1 1/4 cup of all-purpose flour
1/2 cup of cold butter
1/4 cup of ice water

Cut the butter into cubes and put it in the freezer for a few minutes. It has to be cold. If you don't have a pastry cutter, don't cut the butter into cubes - grate it with a cheese grater (the side with the bigger holes) and put it in the freezer for at least an hour and stir it into the flour. If you do have a pastry cutter, cut the butter into the flour down to pea size. Stir in a tablespoon of the water at a time until it just comes together. You might not use up all of the water.

Run your hands under cold water and work the dough into a disc shape. Like I said, underwork it. Put it in a bowl with saran wrap and refrigerate it for at least an hour, up to a day. When it's chilled, carefully dump it out onto a well-floured surface. You don't want so much flour that the dough will dry out, but you don't want to see the countertop, either. Flour the rolling pin as well. Cool off your hands, roll it into a 9-inch circle and carefully place it in a 9-inch pie pan. Press it down with your fingers until it fills up the pan - a bit of overlap is fine. Pour in the filling and bake at 350°F for an hour.

For those wanting to use creme fraîche instead of sour cream but can't find it, you can make it easily. Just stir 1/4 cup of plain yoghourt (I like Astro Balkan style because it only has milk, cream and active bacterial culture - gelatin and powdered milk have no place in yoghourt) in 1 cup of whipping cream and leave it out at room temperature overnight to thicken. You'll have a lot more than you need, but you can whip the rest with a hand mixer with a bit of icing sugar and vanilla extract to make the perfect topping for the pie.

Man, that pie was good. My parents wouldn't even let me take the leftover pie back with me. My dad, who doesn't even like sweet potatoes, loved it. Seriously, give it a try. Or if you don't want to but know me personally, buy one from me or invite me to your next potluck.