Hawaiian Sweet Potato Pie. It's Purple!

The Okinawan sweet potato makes a scrumptious pie.

Make sure to serve each portion with a dollop of whipped cream. The cream works wonders with the rich filling. I dusted the cream with a whisper of cinnamon.

The Okinawan sweet potato is one of the most popular foods in Hawaii. And no wonder. In addition to being a nutritional powerhouse—it’s loaded with antioxdants, vitamins, minerals, and fiber—it’s just plain delicious in both savory dishes and in desserts.

Your market’s produce department is likely not stocking Okinawan purple sweet potatoes. That’s a pity. If it is, you’re in luck. If not, just ask the manager to please order these potatoes. Tell the person in charge how healthy the potatoes are and they’re so delicious; and also say they store extremely well at room temperature and that you’ll guarantee the potatoes sell because you’ll get your friends to buy them.

Ive found these potatoes in southern California. And they’re likely available in many states and neighborhoods where Japanese, Filipinos, and/or Hawaiians live.

What I Learned About This Potato

This purple sweet potato has a dry texture, far dryer than the orange sweet potato, so it boils up without becoming waterlogged. It makes wonderful latkes and gnocchi. You can cook several pounds of unpeeled tubers at a time—it takes 20 to 25 minutes at a rolling boil—and after draining and cooling them, store them in the fridge and use them all week long.

In researching recipes for sweet potato pie, the one rule that I kept seeing said to bake the potatoes instead of boiling them. This may be true for the regular sweet potato, but not the Okinawan. The lack of moisture in these purple sweet potatoes makes them perfect candidates for boiling.

This is how the purple sweet potato is sometimes marketed. The purple netting tells you the potato innards are purple.

I weighed two pounds to boil for the recipe. I wasn’t sure if I’d need that much, but it’s better to have too much than not enough.

Riced sweet potatoes. A ricer gives me potato strands that blend readily with other ingredients. If you don’t have one, mashing with a potato masher works just fine.

Here’s my ricer. I had never seen one before, but many years ago I was told I had to buy one to make the best mashed potatoes. And here it is. The disc on the left is attached to a long handle. The cut cooked potatoes go into the vessel with the holes. After lifting the handle, the disc makes contact with the potatoes and I apply pressure with the handles to force the potatoes through those small holes, ricing them. Ricing potatoes gives them a texture similar to rice, hence the name. The holes in a ricer are about the same diameter of a grain of rice.

The Recipe

Preliminaries

You’ll need an unbaked 9-inch pie crust. This can be any recipe of your choice. Or check out the recipe here, Speedy Food Processor Pastry.

The crust may be made a day or two ahead and refrigerated.

Ingredients

2 cups riced or mashed purple sweet potato (490 grams)

½ cup sugar

¾ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

¼ teaspoon allspice

1/4 teaspoon table salt

1 tablespoon peeled grated fresh ginger

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

4 tablespoons butter, melted

1 cup coconut cream or full fat coconut milk (shake cans well before measuring)

Topping

1 cup heavy cream or whipping cream, whipped with 1 tablespoon confectioners’ sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla until stiff.

Procedure

1. Adjust an oven rack to the center position and preheat the oven to 325˚F.

2. Have the unbaked pie shell at room temperature.

3. In a stand mixer, with the flat beater in place, beat the purple sweet potatoes,

   sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice, salt, and grated ginger on low speed until well-mixed, about 2 minutes. Scrape the bowl and beater and beat on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Scrape the bowl and beater.

4. On low speed beat in the eggs one at a time until thoroughly incorporated, about 1 to 2 minutes.

5. Add the vanilla, butter, coconut cream or full-fat coconut milk and mix on low speed a minute or two until the filling is smooth.

6. Pour into the pie shell and set the pie onto a rimmed baking sheet.

   Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes until the filling is set and a toothpick comes out clean or with just a few crumbs clinging to it.

7. Cool the pie completely on a wire rack. You can serve the pie now or refrigerate it and serve it cold. Dollop each serving with lightly sweetened whipped cream.

   

   Here’s the unbaked purple sweet potato pie ready to go into the oven.

   

   The baked purple sweet potato pie.

   

   A look inside the pie. The creamy filling is dense and smooth.

   Happy Baking!