The Sweet Potato Pie Every Thanksgiving Table Needs | Claire Saffitz

How To Make Sweet Potato Pie with Claire Saffitz | Dessert Person
Claire Saffitz brings a brand-new Thanksgiving and holiday baking essential: a silky, deeply spiced Sweet Potato & Molasses Pie baked in her signature all-butter braided pie crust. Roasted sweet potatoes are blended with brown sugar, molasses, heavy cream, and warm fall spices, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, and cloves to create a custardy filling that’s richer and more complex than traditional sweet potato pie or pumpkin pie. Finished with a billowy molasses whipped cream, this make-ahead holiday dessert is perfect for Thanksgiving dinner, Friendsgiving, Holiday gatherings, cozy fall weekends, and anyone searching for an easy, foolproof, show-stopping pie recipe. If you love flaky pie crust, classic Southern flavors, and warm spice desserts, this Sweet Potato Molasses Pie is a holiday must-bake.
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Sweet Potato and Molasses Pie with Braided Crust

Crust
1½× recipe All-Butter Pie Crust, braided and parbaked
(https://youtu.be/NLxGcFr93TM?si=N8DS5fZKSIWVO5UU)

Filling
16 oz roasted, peeled sweet potato flesh
5 Tbsp unsalted butter (71g)
⅔ cup packed dark or light brown sugar (133g)
2 Tbsp molasses
¾ cup heavy cream (170g), at room temperature
4 large eggs (200g), at room temperature
2 tsp vanilla extract
1½ tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp Diamond Crystal kosher salt
¼ tsp ground allspice
¼ tsp ground nutmeg (preferably freshly grated)
Pinch of ground cloves

To Serve
Whipped cream

Chapters:
0:00 Start
1:33 Ingredients & Special Equipment
3:20 Pie Dough/Crust
8:50 How To Braid Pie Crust
12:40 How To Parbake Pie Crust
13:44 How To Make Sweet Potato Pie
22:24 Slice & Serve

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Video Series:
Producer/Director: Vincent Cross
Camera Operator: Calvin Robertson
Editor/Motion Graphics: Bryant Alvarez

Animation Credits:
Character Designer/Animator/Backgrounds: Jack Sherry
Character Rigger: Johara Dutton

Hi everyone, I’m Claire Sappitz. Welcome to my home kitchen. Today I’m showing you a recipe that would be a great Thanksgiving pie. It’s a sweet potato pie. It’s kind of a variation on the classic pumpkin with kind of a like southern American twist. We’re going to add some molasses. It is a very very intensely flavored filling. It has this like beautiful dark orange hue and it’s just like a great custard pie for any time of year, but specifically Thanksgiving. Dessert [Music] person. Talk to me about sweet potatoes. What’s your infatuation with them? Okay. I love sweet potatoes and this time of year we’re getting like the new crop of potatoes. So, I had there were garnet yams at the grocery store, which is what I have here. And I I just love sweet potato. I eat them a lot. I cook them a lot for our baby. It’s a great alternative to pumpkin when it comes to pie filling. And what’s what I really like about sweet potato is it’s like so easy to prep. You just throw them in the oven and roast them. And I kind of think sometimes depending on what you’re using it it can taste it just has like a different taste than pumpkin that sometimes I kind of like better cuz like pumpkin can be super vegetital and sweet potato just doesn’t have that flavor. So I really really really like using it in pie and the color is so beautiful. I have some cooked sweet potato. I just roasted them and scooped the flesh. Four large eggs. Molasses. I have some brown sugar here, heavy cream, unsalted butter, and then I have some warm spice. You could use any mix or warm spice you like, but here I have some cinnamon, ginger, and then here I have kind of a generous pinch of clove, nutmeg, and allspice. Some kosher salt. For the pie itself, for assembly, I have pie crust that I already made. You’ll need some pie weights, a little egg for egg wash, some flour for rolling it out, and I made a little bit of extra pie crust. I made a 1.5 times recipe. So, I have like a half of a, you know, single pie crust because I’m going to do a braided edge. I did one years ago at Thanksgiving for pumpkin pie and it was so pretty and it’s just like a different kind of little decorative touch which I really like. Um, I think with an open like a custard pie like this, it’s nice to have a little decorative edge, especially for Thanksgiving. So, anytime you’re making a single crust pie, particularly a custard pie, I think it’s non-negotiable that you have to parb bake the crust. Otherwise, because you’re adding a wet filling, you are never going to get a bottom crust that bakes through. And so, this step is tricky for sure. This is actually to me like one of the kind of more difficult technical things to do in the whole realm of baking is to like get a wellbaked nonshrinking like parb baked crust to then pour your custard in that doesn’t have any cracks in it. So I have my I’m using a standard 9 in pie plate here. I made a 1.5 times recipe. So I have one portion that’s just like the regular portion for the bottom crust and then I have a half a recipe for making a kind of decorative edge which I think is just going to be fun and totally optional. So behind me I have a sheet tray with a little foil on it because what happens with a parb baked crust is you get little butter drips. So you want to catch that. My oven is preheated to 400. So the general technique with a par bake is you put it in pretty hot and then with the weights after the crust has had a chance to kind of puff and set and brown a little bit meaning like it’s not going to go anywhere. it’s not going to slump. You remove the weights, drop the temp, and then do kind of more like low and slow bake all the way through. So, that’s the kind of general technique we’re going to follow. If you make your pie crust really far in advance and it sits in the fridge, what ends up happening is the it tends to oxidize and like go a little bit gray, which isn’t so bad, but I just if it’s if you’re going to wait for more than a couple days, freeze it. Okay, so I’m just going to start by rolling this out. I really feel like a custard pie, it is really quite a technical thing to bake and I think a lot of people attempt it on Thanksgiving because that’s a classic Thanksgiving pie. But like if you’re a non-baker and the one day you bake out of the year, you’re baking a custard pie. It’s like that’s really hard. And so watch this video to get a little background on making the process a little bit simpler. I think it’s always a good idea to practice whenever you’re making something where the stakes are like a little bit higher like on a Thanksgiving or you know any any kind of holiday. Okay, so this it’s actually cracking a little bit and I think it’s the mostly it’s cracking cuz I threw it in the freezer to get it chilled because I had it sitting out for a little bit. Um that’s okay. I’ll show you how to deal with cracks as you roll. This side is fine. Okay. So, here is my round. And I don’t need it to be particularly wide because I’m going to trim flush with the plate. So, it’s not like I need an extra I need to overhang to reinforce the edge. I just don’t want it to be too thick. So, I’m going to go until it’s about an eighth of an inch. It’s always a good idea when you’re doing rolling out any kind of pastry to keep it moving and to give it lots of like turns and just like the the bench scraper really helps because the you just don’t want it to stick to the surface because what happens is like if you lift it off then it can kind of contract and shrink and you don’t actually know like how thick you’ve rolled it out or how thin. Okay, but this looks good. I am going to roll it onto my rolling pin and unroll it into my pie plate. Now, anytime you’re fitting pastry into a mold or pan of some kind, you want to let it slump down and fill all of any air gaps. And you don’t want to stretch it because that is what is going to lead to kind of shrinking and contracting when you bake. And what happens when the pastry shrinks is it’ll crack and then you have like a structural problem when you go to add your very liquid filling. So, I like to press really, really firmly and really paying attention to that gap between the side and the bottom so that it’s like in full contact with the plate everywhere all the way around. And now I’m going to press the pastry pretty firmly against the lip of the pie plate all the way around. This looks good. But I’m not going to trim it yet until I get cold. I’m going to stick this into the freezer actually. And then I’m going to grab that little half portion of pie dough and roll that out and start to make my little braided edge. So what I think I’m going to do here is roll it out and do a little fold. Basically flatten everything. Get those pieces of butter flat. Fold the pastry back on top of itself and roll again. you do risk kind of overworking it, but we’re going to let it rest. I also um when I chilled this portion of dough, I I kept it as a rectangle. I chilled as a rectangle, and that’s because I’m going to cut thin strips. So, it’s just easier with a braid, you want the dough to be pretty thin. You just otherwise it you end up with a layer that’s too thick because you’re taking three st strands and weaving them together. They’re too thick, then you just get this like very like unwieldy layer. that rests on the surface of the pie plate. Okay, so this dough is now starting to contract a little bit. So, I’ve worked it a good amount and it’s not really going to thin out much more. So, I’m going to start cutting my strips. I’m going to cut several of these strips because once you start braiding them together, it’s like you’re I’m going to need to kind of like weave together multiple strips to get the length in order to meet to go around the um circumference of the pie plate. So, I’m going to just I’m going to cut a lot of these. And now I just start braiding. If you’ve ever braided before, it’s the exact same technique. If you haven’t braided before, this is maybe not the time to start. You just take three strands and it’s the kind of classic like bringing the outer ones to the center. And I don’t I just kind of start toward the top and I don’t really worry too much about like pinching them together and and like starting at one point because the whole you want the ends loose so that you can kind of bring it around and meet the opposite end and try to kind of get them together a little bit as seamless as possible. So, I want to braid tightly, but when I say tight, I mean like without air gaps, but you don’t want to stretch the dough really, but I am like fitting everything together in a way that there’s no it’s not loose. So, I’m going to keep doing this. And then once I get to the bottom and I start to run out of one, I’m going to try to like basically connect another strand and hide it by tucking it underneath like its neighbor. So, you’re not going to see those seams hopefully. So, now we’re ready to attach the braid to our bottom pie crust. I have an egg here that I’m going to beat just to make a little egg wash. And the egg wash is going to be like a glue to adhere the braid to the bottom crust. I’m also going to grab a little pairing knife. And that’s I’m going to use that to trim the bottom crust. Okay. And I have a little pastry brush right here. So this is really really firm. And I’m going to use the pairing knife to just cut alongside the pie plate and remove the excess crust. Okay. So now this is my glue, my egg wash. I’m going to brush a thin layer of egg wash just around the lip where I’m going to attach the braid. And now going to slide the braid off of the cutting board and onto my pie. All right. So, I do have some overlap, which is good. I am going to just sort of gently press the braid so it aderes. And now where it meets, I am going to try to Let me trim off some of the excess. And I’m going to try to kind of seamlessly weave them to together and like tuck the ends so you can’t see where there’s a beginning and an end. Going to do that. And then where does this one go? Oh, this one goes there. Okay. This looks so pretty. I’m just kind of gently going around and making sure that I have a lot of contact and that the braid is right up against the very edge of my pie plate. So now I want to actually just stick this back in the freezer. I want a chance. I want to give the dough a little bit of time so that the braid can relax. I was doing a lot of manipulating and I want that to be able to relax so that it doesn’t contract in the oven and like, you know, kind of like shift around and shrink. So, another trip to the freezer, maybe 10 minutes or so, and then my oven is already on 400. I have my lined baking sheet. What’s going to happen is I’m going to line this pie with a little bit of foil, being really careful not to disturb the edge. Get my pie weights in and get it into the oven. [Music] Okay, so the pilates go in and I like to really like press. Okay, so into my oven at 400. This is going to bake for about 20 minutes until I start to see a little bit of golden brown around the braid. The crust has been going at 400 for about 25 minutes. The braided edge looks so pretty. It’s like nice and puffed, but it held its shape. So now what I want to do is take it out of the oven. We’re going to lift out the pie weights. It’s going to go back in at a low temp. And that low temp is going to be the same temp at which the pie is going to bake once we put the filling in. So like 325. And then while it’s baking with no pie weights in it, we are going to assemble the filling. And here’s where timing becomes kind of important because you want to add the filling while the filling is warm to the hot crust. So we’re going to assemble the filling. It’s going to be warm and then hopefully right at that time where the crust is kind of light golden brown on the bottom, we’ll put the hot filling in the hot pie crust and the whole thing will bake. One piece of special equipment I don’t think I mentioned was a hand blender which is really important because when you have sweet potato even more so than pumpkin has a kind of like fiber texture to it and we want to just blend it to get it as smooth as possible. So I have my hand blender right here. So, I’m going to get my saucepan over medium heat. I have all my ingredients at room temp right here. I’m going to add my sweet potato. And I’m adding this because I want to drive off some of the water content. So, I had roasted this sweet potato in the oven like just whole. And when I scooped it and it like rested in the fridge, it a little bit of water accumulated in the bottom. And I poured that off before I weighed out 16 ounces or one lb. But there’s still a lot of water content in it. And the more water content you remove, the more you can replace that liquid with more flavorful ingredients like heavy cream and vanilla and egg. So to this, I’m going to add my brown sugar. And I’m going to kind of like cook this until the Oh, and my butter. I have 5 tablespoons of butter. I want to basically like sizzle and fry and caramelize the sweet potato in its own sugars in the brown sugar. And this is where I’m also going to add my molasses. Now, I have I I didn’t measure out my molasses cuz molasses is really sticky and it’s kind of annoying. So, I’m going to just eyeball two tablespoons. And I’m already using brown sugar, which has molasses content. And I like the molasses because it adds Yes, it adds sweetness, but it also adds like a little bit of bitterness. and a kind of nice complexity in the pie and also color. It gives it like a super deep dark hue. Okay, so I’m going to continue to cook this really driving off as much liquid as I can. And I’m going to cook it really until I start to get some like sticking on the bottom of the saucepan. I’m also going to add my spices and give the chance a chance for the spices to kind of bloom in that hot mixture. This is cinnamon. 1 and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon. I have a teaspoon of kosher salt, one teaspoon of ground ginger, and then here I have a big pinch of allspice and then a small pinch each of ground cloves and um ground nutmeg. That’s going to go in. I really I I have a weird sensitivity to nutmeg, but I really do like it in a in a custard pie like this. Smells really good. Okay, so I’m starting to get a little bit of sticking on the bottom. And you want to keep it moving constantly. I’m on medium heat and it’s you can see there’s tons of steam coming off. I’m using a flexible spatula and really scraping around the bottom and sides. And that’s to prevent scorching. Because there’s so much sugar in here, it would easily burn. Smells good. Smells good. Right. Okay. So, now that I’m starting to get a little bit of sticking on the bottom, I’m going to turn off the heat. I’m going to add my heavy cream. This is 3/4 of a cup of room temp heavy cream. And now I’m going to let this cool off a little bit and then I’m going to use my hand blender and blitz everything to make it nice and smooth. If you wanted to do this in advance, you could. You would basically take it to the next step where I’m gonna where you blend everything and make it smooth and then you can chill that. And then if you wanted to pull that out, you would heat it up again on the stove basically. Okay. So, I’m going to blend this. If you don’t have a hand blender, you can just use a standard blender. The hand blender is nice because I can do everything in one pot. So, we’re just looking for a super super silky smooth filling. [Music] All right. So, I want to check on the crust because I’m the eggs and the vanilla are going to kind of be the last thing to incorporate before I put it into my pie shell. And I could just whisk the eggs in. Well, I’m going to temper. I’ll show you. But I could just incorporate the eggs with a whisk, but I already have the hand blender. I’m just going to use a hand blender again. I’m going to leave that there. All right, so the crust has been back in for a little over 10 minutes. I want to just take a peek. All right, it’s looking really good. The bottom is starting to dry out. It just needs a little more time. In maybe another 5 to 10, we’ll come back here. As the crust is finishing, I am going to finish the filling. We’re going to get all back into the oven and then final bake. I honestly really think that the hard part is the par bake unless once the filling goes in because like then then your work is mostly done. So I’m going to crack I have four large eggs. I’m going to crack them into this bowl. Now whenever you’re adding eggs to a warm mixture generally you do a step called tempering which is you’re slowly adding the warm mixture to the eggs and that is to prevent them from cooking or curdling in a way that would make the filling no longer smooth. You don’t want like little pieces of scrambled egg in your filling. Did I get any shell in there? No. So, I’m just going to give this a little blitz and I’m going to add This is where the vanilla extract is going to come in. Two teaspoons. [Applause] Okay, this is steaming. I’m going to turn off the heat. And now I’m going to add my sweet potato mixer a little bit at a time to my eggs as I blend. And this is called tempering where you’re slowly bringing up the temperature of the eggs so that they don’t curdle. Now once I’ve added about half of the mixture, I can just scrape the rest of it in because I’m not going to cook the eggs. [Applause] Okay, so there’s our filling. I’m going to grab the crust now. I’m going to hit it with the egg wash. Because it’s hot, the egg is going to kind of immediately set on the crust. I’m going to paint the braid as well, so it gets really like shiny, golden brown. Filling goes in. Pie goes back into the oven. And that’s it. How warm would you say that filling is? It’s not that hot. Could be hotter. It’s fine. Okay. tastes really good. Okay, so this crust is really perfect. It looks It’s just where I want it to be, which is kind of lightly golden brown across the bottom. Hitting it with the egg wash helps to seal any like little cracks that may be formed. So, this helps to prevent some soggginess. And you can see that when I paint the egg on the bottom, it immediately it looks matte. Like, it immediately goes matte. And that’s because it’s kind of setting against that hot crust. And that’s what we want. Okay. So now my filling is going to go in. But yeah, we should be able to fit it all. Okay. So now I’m just going to smooth the surface. And now back into the oven. My oven is still on 325. Cal, can you actually grab Is there any chance you can get the oven door for me? Okay. Thank you. Ready? Okay. Okay. All the hard work is done. Camera cut. 45 minutes. I checked on the pie. What I saw through the oven door was that the surface had puffed. And that’s how you know the eggs are cooked is that sort of puffing soule effect. So then I looked at it and when I opened the oven door and I jiggled the sheet tray, it was mostly set with a tiny bit of wobble in the center. And that’s when you know your custard pie is done. So I turned the oven off. We can take a little peek at it, but I’m not going to take it out of the oven because I want to let it cool gently in the in the oven with the door propped open so that it doesn’t get like a a thermal shock. Basically, when you bring it into cold air, you get like a contraction and that’s when you can get a crack on the surface. So, I’m going to just prop the door open, but we can take a look at what it looks like when it’s when it’s done. So, we let the pie cool in the oven, turned off with the door propped open for about an hour. The crust looks so good. It’s so poorly filled. It cracked a little. I have like an inch and a half long crack in the center. I think we cooled it gently. I think I just probably baked it for like a couple minutes too long. There probably could have been a little more of a wobble. So overbaking slash like the shock of cooling it can do that. But we’re going to serve with a little whipped cream so you won’t even know. There we go. Oh my gosh. So beautiful. Such a nice slice. I love that the custard still has like a little wobble. See that? If you can see that texture. And that’s how we know that there’s enough eggs and dairy in here. I don’t like a sweet potato or pumpkin pie where there’s so much of the puree in it that it’s like eating sweetened vegetable puree rather than like a custard flavored with it. So that little wobble is so nice. Let’s try it. Flaky bottom crust. Wow. It’s actually part of it is that it’s so good because it’s warm and it’s just like making all the flavors really pop. It is so delicious. It is so smooth and all of the Oh my god. This is kind of like the most ideal custard pie I could possibly think of. It’s so good. Oh, I want to get a little taste of the crust. So flaky and tender. Minus the crack. This is a pretty perfect pie. This is really so so good. I’m definitely going to make this on Thanksgiving. I’m calling it. Wow. So much technique to pie making, especially a custard pie where you’re par baking it. You’re making a decorative edge. You’re putting the filling in hot. Like there’s a lot. It’s a little bit of a dance and there’s some choreography, but so worth it. Definitely a pie you want on a practice, I think, if you’re going to make it for Thanksgiving, but even if you have like some filling running or a crack, the taste is still so delicious and so evocative of fall. No one’s going to care. Again, just cover up your any mistakes with a little whipped cream. Um, this is not a sponsored episode, so thanks so much for watching and don’t forget to like and subscribe. You won’t be starting to do it over. [Music]