I love a good family recipe, and this one is just wonderful! Sweet potato pie is an all-American favorite, and this version from the Gaspard family is smooth, rich, and melt-in-your-mouth scrumptious. The dough is very crisp, and a nice contrast to the texture of the sweet potato, which has a custardy consistency that is just plain elegant. The garnish – a few coins of cooked sweet potato sprinkled with sugar and browned in the oven – add a toothsome sweetness to the tart that really puts it over the top. If you’re looking to change up your Thanksgiving meal a bit, these sweet potato tarts are WHW – White House worthy – and by that, I mean this is the kind of dish you could expect to find on a White House buffet.
This comes to us from a Beverly Gaspard, matriarch to a Southern family (now located in LA!), all of whom relish a good Sunday night supper, especially together.
Beverly’s Sweet Potato Tarts
Serves: Makes 12 tarts
Prep time: one hour and thirty minutes, including one hour baking time
Preheat oven to 325 degrees
Ingredients
- 1 8-ounce package of cream cheese
- 8 ounces of butter
- 1 cups flour
- 2 large sweet potatoes, plus one small, thin sweet potato for garnish
- 1 ½ cups sugar
- 1 6-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
- 5 eggs
- 1 Tablespoon cinnamon
- 1 Teaspoon nutmeg
- 1 Tablespoon vanilla
Directions
- To make the dough:
Using the dough hook attachment of a mixer, mix cream cheese and butter. - Add flour, a little at a time, until well-incorporated. Press together to form a ball, wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate for one hour.
- For the filling:
Wash and scrub two sweet potatoes and cook with skin on until tender when a fork is inserted. - Cool slightly.
- Whip potatoes in mixer, and add sugar, milk, eggs, cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla. Mixture will be thin.
- Spray muffin tins with non-stick spray.
- Pinch off a small piece of dough and roll out to a round that will fit into each muffin tin.
- Pat dough along bottom and sides of each muffin mold. Fill ¾ full with sweet potato mixture.
- Bake at 325 degrees for 50 minutes until custard is firm and crust is golden brown.
- For the sweet potato coins:
Roast a small sweet potato until soft when a fork is inserted into it (about 40 minutes) at 325 degrees. - Allow to cool, then peel sweet potato and slice into coin-sized rounds.
- Place on small baking sheet and sprinkle with sugar.
- Put sweet potato coins into a 450 degree oven until they brown (about ten minutes). Remove from oven and place several coins on each tart as a garnish.
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